Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei

by L. J. Hayward

  In retaliation, Erin punched as many of the floor buttons as she could. “What do you mean you don’t know? I thought you were an expert on this sort of stuff.”

  The poor elevator was as confused as I was. Its doors groaned in indecision. Beyond them, I could hear the furious battle taking place between vampire and… whatever it was. Maybe Erin had a point. I should probably know these things, right? Especially if it could take Mercy’s higher functions—and therefore mine—off line so quickly and thoroughly.

  I settled for muttering, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…” and ran up against a possibility I wouldn’t have considered otherwise.

  “Not a great excuse, Hawkins,” Erin snapped, checking the mag of her Glock.

  “Not an excuse,” I said.

  “Then what—”

  “Shh.” I closed my eyes to block out Erin’s affronted glare.

  Heaven. Or perhaps... Hell. The thing in the foyer, the angelic looking thing, was responsible for Mercy’s flip-out and it had felt familiar, like a distilled, concentrated sensation I’d been aware of for a while now. Imps. Their small influence on my psychic senses hadn’t bothered me, or Mercy, before. This was no imp, but I was willing to bet it was the same family—demon.

  Opening my eyes, I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going to open the doors and when I do, you stay in here. Hopefully it’ll be safer.”

  “And you?”

  “I have to help Mercy.” I drew my Barretta Cougar and put a hand on the perhaps permanently closed doors.

  My fine control of my psychic abilities was getting better. Pity this didn’t call for fine control. I reached out with the ephemeral hand of my psyche and pushed it between the doors. Pouring as much strength as I could into it, I shoved outward.

  With an agonised squeal, the elevator doors opened. The moment I took my concentration away from it, the doors would close again, so I dived through as soon as it was wide enough. As I rolled and came to my feet, I saw Erin dart out between the rapidly narrowing doorway.

  “I said,” I began, but cut myself off as Erin—looking beyond me—suddenly dived to one side.

  Taking it on faith, I dived in the other direction. Something big and blue and suspiciously electrical looking smashed into the doors of the elevator. The thick metal doors buckled and smoked, burnt black in a neat circle right where I had been standing.

  Erin and I stared at it for perhaps a second, then scarpered for cover. I skidded in behind a plush couch, or at least, the remains of a plush couch. From memory, it had been a nice, burnt orange colour when I’d passed it on my way up to Ivan and Brad’s. Now, it was just burnt. Erin rolled behind the unmanned concierge desk. She was soon joined by Mercy, tossed there by the distressingly unharmed looking angel—eh, demon.

  The damage done in the few minutes it had taken me and Erin to argue was impressive. Not one piece of furniture was unscathed, not one potted plant would survive—a few in fact made very lovely burning torches—and one of the floor to ceiling glass panels along the front wall was shattered. Amidst the ruins was the demon; golden, glorious and worthy of all sorts of religious experiences.

  Maybe I’d got it wrong. Maybe she was an angel.

  Erin popped up from behind the concierge desk and unloaded a nine-mil at the demon.

  It hit in a spray of dark fluid, staggering the demon back a single step. Viciously fast, the demon caught her balance and flung a hand out. A bolt of blue light shot back at Erin. Throwing herself to the side let the bolt hit the wall and burn right through it.

  Holy freaking cow.

  Calm as you please, the demon lowered her hand and turned to face me. “Night Caller,” she said, her voice resonating with choral echoes.

  I looked around for someone else to blame, came up empty and so, on a whim, I stood and said, “Yeah? Who’s asking?”

  She tilted her fine face. “You hardly seem dangerous. Your female things have proven feistier.”

  To illustrate, Mercy rocketed back over the desk and straight for the demon. Moving like mercury, the demon sidestepped the charge and, wings snapping close to her back, followed with a roundhouse kick aimed to take Mercy’s head from her shoulders. If Mercy had been where she was supposed to be, that is.

  Mercy, perhaps a nano-second slower than the demon, flipped out of reach, then tumbled back in under the creature’s guard. She kicked at a knee with both booted feet and bones snapped. The demon crashed down.

  Mercy took full advantage of the situation. She flowed to her feet, put a foot on the demon’s belly, grabbed her unbroken leg and twisted hard and sharply. Cracking bones grated against each other, making my teeth ache. The demon lifted a hand, blue glow growing.

  “Merce!”

  The vampire spun into moonlight and vanished. Blue light seared through the space Mercy had just vacated, hit the roof and dropped a light fixture onto the demon. With a negligent motion, the light was tossed aside. The massive wings heaved and pounded against the floor. Then they lifted the demon up into the air, broken legs dangling uselessly. The beat of the wings created a gale force wind that knocked me to the ground. Trapped inside the relatively small—compared to that wing span, at least—space, the wind whipped back on her. She wouldn’t be able to hover in here long.

  The demon screamed. A high pitched, sharp sound that shattered the remaining glass front of the foyer. With a big beat of her wings, she moved out into the open night. I scrambled to my feet and raced out after her, Cougar held ready. Erin’s shot had hurt it. I had every hope mine would kill it.

  She rocketed upward faster than I could follow and vanished into the dark sky.

  Mercy materialised beside me. “It’s not gone.” Her maniacal rage was still there, partly relieved by the fight, enough at least to let some thoughts gather coherently in her head.

  “I figured.”

  She ground her teeth together. “Smelled like imp. Only worse.” Her control was slipping again, tugging at me through the link.

  “Demon.” It was all the confirmation I needed. Mercy’s senses were more acute than mine.

  She growled.

  Erin came out, dusting fine glass shards off her clothes. Eyeing Mercy warily, she asked me, “Any ideas what it was?”

  “We’re working on the hypothesis that it’s a demon.” I pulled out a suppressor and screwed it onto the Cougar. After raising an unholy ruckus by shooting round after endless round into the werewolf-dog, I’d invested in a suppressor. Not quite the best thing ever, but a damn fine invention.

  Erin stared me. “A demon?”

  “You sound shocked.”

  “Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be. But it looked… well, angelic.”

  “My thought exactly.” I gave up scanning the sky. If I saw it coming, it would be too late. “Mercy.”

  She didn’t need the encouragement. Unleashing her inner predator, eyes gilded in burnished silver, she swirled away.

  Erin shivered. “What happened in the elevator?”

  I swallowed at the thought of how close I’d come to hurting Erin, or letting Mercy hurt her—which amounted to the same thing. “I think it was the demon. It provoked Mercy into a killing rage.”

  “And you.”

  “And me,” I admitted tightly. “Where’s your car?”

  “That way.” She pointed in the opposite direction to which I’d parked.

  “I’ll walk you to your car. The demon’s still around. You should get away while you can.”

  Planting her feet, Erin produced her own suppressor. “You’re not shoving me off like that.”

  I nearly forgot the rampaging demon somewhere above us. “I thought you didn’t want to be a part of my world. And this thing’s clearly coming for me.”

  She stared back with grim determination. “It shot at me.”

  “Oh. Well, okay then.”

  She trotted along with me to my car. I pulled out my phone and opened the GPS program. It had been modified to track a tracer I’d put un
der Mercy’s skin. The dot signifying Mercy flashed about the screen, then narrowed down into a straight line.

  I grabbed Erin’s arm and simply let myself fall. A great bellow of wind helped us on the way down. We hit the footpath and the demon swept over us, clearing about three feet. Sheesh. Mercy was right behind it. She sailed in on a streak of silver light and planted both feet into its belly. They crashed together and rolled into the brick wall of the building. Dust and mortar rained down and the bricks groaned.

  Flipping to into a crouch, I aimed the Cougar and Mercy, surfing on my mental wave, flung herself out of the way. The gun barked softly and the demon jerked with the impact.

  After a couple of shots, the demon slumped against the wall, broken legs skewed, body oozing some black substance I was going to call blood. Her wings twitched but that was all. Head tilted to one side, once blazing eyes dull, jaw slack, chest unmoving. Dead.

  Right?

  Mercy wasn’t convinced. She charged in, irrational, and was met with an abruptly raised arm. Bones cracked in Mercy’s chest as she crumpled over the demon’s arm. With a contemptuous flick, Mercy was thrown aside.

  Echoes of Mercy’s pain spearing my chest, I shot the demon again and again. Erin joined me. Eyes alight with blue fire once more, the demon grinned at us and held her hands out to our weapons.

  The gun shifted in my hand. Erin gasped and suddenly, our guns were pulled from our grips and flew into the demon’s. She sat up, not at all weakened by the slugs already in her. A cruel smile curled her lips.

  “So easy.”

  And she fired both guns.

  Silver flashed before my eyes and Mercy dropped out of the mist. Her t-shirt was splashed with blood in two places. Two bullets wouldn’t keep her down and she stood up into the next barrage. I threw myself over Erin anyway and we huddled behind the vampire.

  The demon kept firing into Mercy. I cringed with each impact. I could feel them through the link, though what I sensed was nowhere near what Mercy suffered. And while Mercy was tough, much more of this and she’d be out for the count.

  The tension, the fear, the growing anger that this thing was trying to kill me, trying to kill Mercy, worked against my hard won control. The dark stirred and blossomed as a red sheen over my sight. It roared through my blood and emerged from my throat as a low, rumbling growl. Under me, Erin shook.

  Sure, the berserker rage had got me into trouble many times, but it had also saved my life more than once. Didn’t mean I could let it out uncontrolled, however.

  Unlike in the elevator, I was sort of prepared for the effect of the demon on Mercy and hence me. Thanks to my practice with the finer points of my psychic-coolness, I had learned to channel energy into them.

  I balled up all the rage and fear and red hot need to hurt something and shoved it deep into my chest. It consumed the well of energy already sitting there and I was suffused with a powerful tremble.

  Before it could explode out of me and flatten Erin, I lifted myself off her and faced the demon. A quick snap down the internal line and Mercy dropped to the ground. I slammed the power forward and it smashed into the demon, collecting the fired bullets on the way. It pulverised the bullets and hit the demon like a battering ram, shoving her into the wall. And I mean into the wall. It was like she melted into it.

  She screamed that bone weakening sound again and I pushed her head back into the bricks. Shut her up for good. All that stuck out was her legs and the outer half of each wing, which twitched and then stilled.

  Talk about a head rush. The world around me went hazy and spun in all directions all at once. I crashed down. Erin caught me. At least, she softened the impact and swore about it.

  Weakened, Mercy’s driving need to kill ebbed. She hauled herself up and crawled over, careful not to drip her toxic blood onto us.

  “Jesus,” Erin said and I wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a prayer.

  I said something. No idea what, and apparently no one else did either. They looked at me strangely.

  “It’s doing something,” Erin warned.

  I tried to struggle up and settled for rolling over so I could see. The bits of the demon still showing faded, then vanished. All that was left was a dint in the wall. The last of Mercy’s rage vanished along with the demon.

  We looked at the empty space, at each other, then back at the wall.

  “Think it’s dead?” Erin asked.

  Mercy tilted her head. “It’s not here anymore.”

  “And that’s about all I care about.” I let my head drop back to the ground. Nice, soft cement.

  The next thing I knew, I was in a car—a quick look around revealed it was mine—hurtling down the motorway toward home. Erin was driving and Mercy was in the back seat, an old blanket waded up over her wounds.

  “How?” I mumbled.

  “Mercy and I put you in the car. She’s too out of it to drive, so I am.”

  I checked out again for a while, came back in when we were pulling into the driveway.

  I had the wits to stagger into the house under Mercy and Erin’s steam. They tossed me on my bed and I gave Erin the blood fridge key and firm instructions for one bag only of O pos. Mercy sulked and trundled out after Erin.

  After that, it was sweet goodbye for Matt Hawkins.

  Chapter 10

  Mercy took her bag of blood and mooched out of the kitchen. Erin followed her. She wasn’t willing to let herself think the vampire was back to normal—whatever normal was for Mercy. The other vampires Erin had been exposed to—opposing armies on top of Mount Coot-tha—had been more mindless machines than autonomous creatures. Mercy was different, which probably stemmed from the fact she was under Matt’s control.

  Or was it other way around?

  It had been clear in the elevator Mercy had been the first to succumb to whatever terrorising influence the demon had, and Matt had followed suit.

  She’d seen him go into a mindless rage twice before. Once, he’d been lost to it completely, going up against a 300 year old vampire strong enough to think for himself and smash Mercy around as if she was a bothersome fly. The second time, he’d come after her, a deadly, predator gleam in his eyes that spoke of emotionless, cold calculation. She had been nothing to him in that moment, a mere source of food for his vampire. For himself, in a twisted sense.

  But he’d come out of it, both then and now. Then, he may have subdued her so Mercy could feed, but he hadn’t let Mercy drain her of blood. Tonight, he’d pulled himself—and Mercy to an extent—back from hurting her in the elevator. Now the demon was gone, there was not a glimmer of wild killer in either of them.

  Still, Erin followed Mercy, wanting to keep her in view, be warned if she snapped again.

  Mercy, bag of blood dangling from one hand, paused in the doorway of a room in the middle of the house. “Yes?” she asked pointedly.

  Eyeing the vampire warily, struck by the contradictions between vicious supernatural creature and sweet faced girl, Erin asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Pale and watery blood bubbled out of a wound in her chest with each breath she took.

  “Do you need a hand with your wounds?”

  Mercy rolled her eyes. “No. Matt taught me how to pull out my own bullets.”

  Erin’s stomach quivered. “Okay then.”

  Mercy stepped back into the room and slammed the door.

  “Fine,” Erin muttered and then went back into Matt’s room.

  He was out of it again, half on the bed, half off it. She’d thought he would have at least fixed himself up before zonking. Considering just leaving him, she went over and tried to wake him up. He mumbled and pushed her away. Fending him off, she hauled him onto the bed properly and took off his boots. He didn’t make his bed and it was easy to pull the sheet out and toss it over him. All the while, he just slept on. Whatever he’d done had drained him.

  She left the bedroom before she could collapse. What he’d done… It had been terrifying. Almost as frighten
ing as the demon. A blast of… something reaching from him to the demon. And six months ago, she’d seen him—or rather, not seen him—move as fast as Mercy in order to chop off Veilchen’s head. Neither feat something a human could accomplish. When she’d told him about the speed he’d used, he hadn’t realised he’d done it. She hadn’t stuck around to find out how that had affected him.

  Yet here she was, in his house.

  She pulled out her phone to call Ivan to see if he could come pick her up, but didn’t. He’d want to know how she ended up out here and her head wasn’t working enough to concoct a story to cover up the truth. She dialled a taxi company, then hung up before the automatic response could get too far. A fare would reach the lofty heights of a hundred dollars at the very least. Not officially on a case, she couldn’t write it off as an expense.

  All in all, it would be easier to stay until Matt woke up and took her back to her car.

  And then what? Try again to convince Ivan to drop Matt from the investigation? The last thing Ivan and Brad needed was some demon lurking around just because Hawkins was involved with them.

  A demon.

  Holy shit. Perhaps literally.

  Escaping from vampires aside, Erin hadn’t been to church since William got sick. Too many bad associations. From William’s family’s response to his illness to Erin’s bitter argument with the blind injustice of life in general, belief in God had begun to feel too hard—too much like they’d been betrayed by the one, uncompromising ally they were supposed to have.

  She’d almost made peace with the idea that God didn’t exist and that William’s cancer was just bad luck. Turn her back on religion and rile against fate instead. It was more understandable. God didn’t exist and life sucked.

  Except that now Hawkins was convinced the thing they’d seen tonight was a demon.

  Erin sank down onto the couch in the living room.

  Vampires and werewolves. Fine. Those she could wrap her head around, sort of. But demons? Demons that looked like the traditional image of angels? What did it mean? Had she seen a fallen angel tonight? Had she shot a fallen angel?