by Debra Dunbar
Chapter 26
“I was followed,” Wyatt whispered into my neck as he hugged me. I was actually taller than him in this form.
“Is she here?” It had to be Labisi.
He shook his head. “In the parking lot. Sam, I’m not sure how we’re going to get out of here. Maybe if you stay like this, she’ll think I’m cheating on you. Then we can go to a rent by the hour motel, and hopefully she’ll give up and head back to the casino.”
She might, but I thought she’d probably continue to follow Wyatt until Sobronoy told her he had me in his grubby little hands. Soon enough Sobronoy would figure out that I’d slipped out of the casino, and she’d connect the dots.
“I think our best bet is to act like you’re flying the coop with me. We’ll head home as fast as we can and if she comes after us I’ll deal with it.”
“They know where we live, don’t they? Even if we get away from them, they’ll eventually show up at your house to grab you. Wouldn’t it be easier to deal with them here?”
I shook my head. “At home I’ve got Boomer and even Diablo to help out. You have no idea how amazing Boomer can be if I turn him loose, and I know Diablo will be happy for the opportunity to kill something. He blew a deer apart the other week. He’s pretty impressive. I know he’d love to help me kill a demon.”
Wyatt looked surprised. “I thought you all didn’t kill each other?”
“Well, not in the normal course of things, but I’m not going home and the only way I can send a strong message about this is to kill every single demon Haagenti sends to collect me.”
Wyatt nodded and we walked out the door like two illicit lovers, got into the Corvette, and drove off. I was driving, so if Labisi came after us I could take off like a maniac. I hoped she was stupid, because there would be no way Wyatt would just hand over the Corvette to some random hot chick. The moment I got into the driver’s seat, she should have been on us.
Clearly she was stupid, because we pulled out onto the highway with her a respectable distance behind. We’d made it all the way into Delaware when she must have gotten the phone call from Sobronoy. I saw the grey Honda weave around traffic and speed up. She was fast and rather reckless, clipping other cars to catch up, but I’d been living as a human for forty years and my driving experience far outclassed hers. I’d pulled away and put about a quarter mile between us when she began to catch up. Fuck.
I wasn’t taking any chances and kept looking in my rearview mirror, so I actually saw her coming up behind us. I was going to need to deal with this right here. Otherwise I’d be stuck in a defensive position while she blasted away at my car. I needed to get out and confront her where I’d have room to move, duck, and dodge and have an opportunity to take her head off.
“Give me your belt,” I told Wyatt. “I’m going to yank over to the shoulder here and confront her. When I hop out, you scoot over and take the wheel so you can drive.”
“I’m not driving off and leaving you, Sam,” Wyatt protested.
I looked at him in surprise. “Of course not. I want you to mow her down if you get the chance.”
Wyatt grinned. “Will do.”
We pulled over to the shoulder and I looped Wyatt’s belt loosely around my waist.
“Try to make sure she doesn’t notice you, so you can surprise her. And be careful,” I instructed as I jumped out of the car to face Labisi.
She pulled over behind our car about fifty feet and got out, putting her hands out to her sides in supplication.
“Come with me, little imp, and no one will be hurt. If you refuse, I’ll fight you. I don’t care how much energy I use. I can take you down and be out of here before the angels arrive.”
I looked at her and saw the edges of the disk in her hand. Great. She had one of the damned elf buttons, too. How much had Haagenti spent to make sure I came back to face his wrath?
I walked forward with my head down in a submissive posture. I was only an imp, a little cockroach. She surely didn’t expect me to fight. Taking the feather barrette out of my hair, I shook it loose from the pony tail and made as if I were going to toss the ornament aside, only to swing it in an arc and wish like hell it was a sword again. There was a flash and a sword appeared. Unfortunately I hadn’t figured in the time it took for the object to transform and it missed her head, assuming its deadly shape on the downward stroke.
Labisi shrieked and yanked her head backward, throwing her arms forward for balance, which put her right limb squarely in the path of the descending sword. Well, at least I did some damage, I thought as the sword cleanly sliced through her arm and sent the limb tumbling to the pavement. Labisi shot a bolt of energy toward me with the remaining hand and I hit the ground and rolled, avoiding the blast that knocked the sword loose from my hand. The energy slammed into a Nissan and launched it onto its side into the median as the occupants screamed.
My sword clattered to the ground, and then shot into traffic as another of Labisi’s bolts of energy hit it. Bitch was trying to destroy my sword! Didn’t she know what it was? I rolled after it as it slid across the road and under a pick-up truck, narrowly avoiding a car that swerved to miss the sword and almost creamed me instead. Cars were honking, people screaming, and I’d rolled my way through a particularly nasty patch of oil some vehicle had spilled in the roadway.
Everyone on the road was in a panic and the pick-up truck sped up, driving right over top of the sword. I winced thinking I clearly wasn’t a good choice of guardian for this thing. I’ll bet Thor never had his hammer run over by a truck. I hadn’t even been the Iblis for twenty-four hours and I already sucked.
Figuring I’d deal with traffic better on my feet, I lurched upright and tried to grab the sword, narrowly avoiding being mowed down by a sedan. A second blast of energy took a chunk of flesh off my leg and blew pulverized bits of asphalt into the air. Labisi was now filling the pavement full of holes with shotgun-like blasts. Fuck, she was not kidding here. I wondered if the edict from Haagenti was “dead or alive” after all.
At this point, cars were recklessly speeding past our scene of chaos. A few idiots slowed down to rubber-neck. One car was soundly rear-ended and pushed right on top of my sword. I’d be lucky if the damned thing worked at all after this kind of abuse. I tried once more to dart around the traffic and grab it, but a blast from Labisi hit a few feet from me, digging another chunk out of the road. Fuck the sword. I needed to take this demon out fast before she actually hit me with one of those shots.
I ran and ducked, putting the rear-ended car between the pair of us. Labisi screamed in frustration and raced toward me, shooting a blast that sent the car blocking me up and over the car in back of it. At this point the oncoming traffic had stopped, blocked in by drivers too smart to drive into explosions and flying vehicles. It was just us and the screaming humans.
I thought of how pissed Gregory was going to be at me. Weird, I know, to think about that sort of thing in the middle of a fight, but I did. I’d Owned a human, killed six, and now this. He was going to beat me senseless and drag me back to Aaru. Aaru. . . Hel. . . two beings trying to haul me places I didn’t want to be. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of either of these situations.
I was running as I thought, trying to get behind another car when Labisi grabbed me by the wrist. She was strong and I struggled hard against her, feeling my wrist bones begin to snap and crumble.
“I’ve got you, you fucking piece of shit,” she announced in triumph.
Yep, she had me, but she didn’t have her button. I’d sliced off the hand with the portable gate and the realization dawned on her as she looked down at a stump of an arm. I seized on her moment of inattention and grabbed the antenna of the squashed car beside me, intending to snap it off and beat her with it. The antenna was on tighter than I thought and my hand was slippery with oil from the spill I’d rolled in. It snapped loose from my grasp and, like a whip, cracked Labisi in the face. She screamed as blood poured from the vertical gash, and let g
o of my wrist. I bolted.
A blast of energy streaked past, melting the front end of the car before me. She wasn’t holding back at all. I might have to use energy to take her out instead of trying to do it the human way. I was in so much shit with Gregory that blowing up a section of the interstate and a bunch of humans shouldn’t make much difference, but first I had to find that damned button before she did.
Scrambling and dodging, I looked for it. Another blast clipped me, tearing flesh and bone from my hip, sending me sliding face first along the blacktop and partially under a pick-up truck, where I found my nose firmly against an arm. Her grip must have loosened when her arm separated from her body, because the button was up under the front tire. Luckily, the truck was jacked up a bit and I scooted toward the button.
A hand grabbed my leg and tugged painfully. I had to get that fucking button, so I held onto the truck’s frame with one hand and whipped off Wyatt’s belt. I felt my hip begin to dislocate as I tossed the buckle end at the button, trying to drag it to me. I missed with the first toss, and I wasn’t sure my leg would hold out long enough to hook the portable gate. Just as I was about to give up and turn my attention to Labisi, I heard a squishy thunk, and my leg was released.
I felt it. In a fraction of a second, I felt her store of raw energy pour out of her. Wyatt. All the humans. My beloved car. She didn’t have as much as I did, but it was still enough to blow a huge hole in the interstate and kill everyone in the area. Mine, I thought, with as much intent and power as I could put behind the word. Then I pulled the raw energy inside me. I took. I devoured. In an instant, I possessed it all, every last speck.
Scrambling forward, I grabbed the button, and scooted out the other side of the truck. There was Wyatt, in my Corvette, driving back and forth over a pulp of Labisi. I winced thinking what this was doing to my precious car. He pulled the car off her, and got out, his gun half hidden in his waistband, to look down at the chunks of flesh and bone on the road.
“Do you think she’s dead, or should I shoot her a few times just to make sure? I don’t want to shoot her unless I have to. You’ll be visiting me in jail for a long time if I discharge a weapon on the highway.”
“Uh, no. She’s dead.” I limped over.
Demons can take a huge amount of damage, but, Gregory’s assurances aside, total destruction of our physical form kills us. There was no way she’d survived this one, but I reached down and ran my energy over the flesh just to make sure. Yep. Dead. I quickly fixed my hip and other injuries and looked at the elf button. Normally I’d want to keep something so expensive and cool, but I could hardly cart this pile of gore home in my car, and I needed to send a message.
I put the button on what remained of Labisi and activated the portable gate. “Glah ham, shoceacan.”
The flesh and bone vanished in a flash, leaving only a smear of blood on the pavement.
“Are you ok, Sam?” Wyatt asked, his voice concerned as his eyes roamed over my tattered clothing and newly healed flesh.
“Yes, thanks to your bulldozer imitation with my car,” I replied. There was a pretty good sized dent in the bumper, but given the wreckage around us, the Corvette had fared well.
Wyatt smiled at, his eyes warm, and he put his arm around my shoulder. “Happy to be of service.”
I motioned toward the car. “We’ve got to get out of here. I’m expecting Sobronoy at any moment, and he’s going to be much harder to fight than Labisi.”
It wasn’t just Sobronoy I was worried about. Gregory would probably arrive soon and I was hoping to avoid that confrontation for as long as possible.
It took us a while to weave around the broken and abandoned cars and make our way back into traffic. I wondered about the fallout from this little incident. Someone was bound to have videoed the whole thing on their cell phone, possibly even taken down our license plate number as we left. Would state police come calling? Was I going to have to deal with the nightmare of a human legal system in addition to pissed off angels and demons? I glanced over at Wyatt, deciding to see whether he could hack our way out of this one. Maybe he could switch my car plate number and registration records at the DMV with some other poor sap.
Wyatt navigated using his cell phone, and we tore down back roads in record time. Sobronoy was nowhere to be found. I had been worried that he’d be waiting for us at the house, but we seemed to make it there before him. I pulled in Wyatt’s driveway and let him out.
“Go inside and get all your defenses set,” I told him. “I think we’ve got at least a few hours before Sobronoy gets here. I’m going to go get Boomer and Diablo and take care of things and my house, and then I’ll call you.”
He kissed me and hopped out.
Chapter 27
I parked by the back of my house and ran out to the barn in order to find Boomer and unlock his magnificent hellhound self. Usually he was snoozing in the barn all day, but not today. I checked the usual spots, and then headed out to the field to look for him. There was a huge groundhog hole at the edge of the woods, and he liked to shove his head in it and nap. He wasn’t there, but a demon was.
Oh, not Boomer, I thought in panic. How long had this demon been here, waiting for me? What had she done with Boomer? With Diablo? They were both nowhere to be found. What if Candy or Michelle had come by? Had the demon killed them all? I’d halted in shock to see the demon there, by the groundhog hole. She’d seen me and was smiling, with a smug look on her face as she motioned me closer.
I recognized her right away. Busyasta. She was so high in level that she didn’t even bother with a human form. She just didn’t give a shit. Her long claws clacked as they rapped on the rocky ground, her skin stretched tight over bones and golden yellow in the sunshine. A stench of rot wafted over to me on the breeze. I hoped it was her that smelled so bad, and not the remains of my friends. That bastard Haagenti was covering all the bases if he had a demon waiting here at home for me, in case I escaped the two in Atlantic City.
“Where’s Boomer?” I asked, my heart in my mouth. At least Diablo has some means of defense. Boomer didn’t. Why did I leave my dog locked down so tight he couldn’t fight back? I swore that no matter how many corpses he dug up and ate, I was never doing this to him again. Ever.
Busyasta looked confused for a second. “The groundhog?” She smiled. “I killed it and ate it. Thing put up quite a fight. It would be nice if you did, too. It’s so disappointing when they come easy.”
I relaxed. She’d killed the groundhog. If she’d taken out a hellhound or a demon horse, she would be rubbing their deaths in my face. They had to be alive. Somewhere.
I reached for my barrette and panicked as I felt my loose hair. I’d left the sword under a car back in Delaware. It’s not like I’m used to carrying a big ass sword around with me. I mentally kicked myself. So worthy of the Sword of the Iblis that I’d forgotten it under a car. I’ll bet no warrior in the history of the universe had ever done that. I’ll bet Thor never left his hammer behind after a battle. I was going to lose against Busyasta big time. I was going home in a body bag if I had to fight her with only my energy. Taking the initiative, I shot a blast at her and dove, picking up a couple stones as I rolled back to my feet some distance away.
Busyasta laughed. I’d missed her completely. I’d been living as a human for so long, trying to lay low, that I’d lost some skill. This wasn’t going to turn out well, being forced to fight with energy like the demon I was.
“You suck,” Busyasta commented, climbing down from the groundhog mound. “I’m going to need to ratchet this down big time if I want to have any fun at all with you.”
I threw my rocks at her and was thrilled to see them impact with her face. She laughed again as blood ran in steaks down her forehead and cheek.
“Little imp, you fight like a human.” She launched a stream of energy at me.
I dove and rolled, shooting out a blast of my own as the edge of hers hit my leg. Oddly enough, my leg didn’t blow apart in a gory mes
s, it just went numb. The bitch was taking it easy on me, playing with me. I shot another blast at her, and as she avoided it, ran at her as fast as my one numb leg could go. She fell backward with my tackle right on top of the groundhog mound and I shot energy into her at close range.
She deflected the energy with a grunt. Fuck. She’d actually converted the blast I’d thrown at her. Our foster parents used that skill to break up fights, but few demons managed to cultivate it. I’d need to either overwhelm her defense with an overload of energy or take out her physical form in a more unconventional, human manner. Backing up, I looked around for a weapon. Damn, I wish Boomer or Diablo was around to help me take her down. She couldn’t shoot at all three of us.
Busyasta struggled a little, her rear stuck down into the sizable groundhog hole, and I took advantage of the opening to shoot her again with a blast of energy. She twisted, pulling free of the hole and my shot clipped her, ripping flesh down to bone on her back.
“Bitch,” she said and shot me square in my stomach, throwing me a few feet and onto my back. I rolled as the world spun in a blur before my eyes. I was tingling numb in all my extremities and I couldn’t see straight. My only hope was to wait until she came close to grab me, then empty everything I had in her, hoping to overwhelm her defenses.
She continued to blast at me as she came closer, obviously making sure I didn’t shake off my numbness before she could secure me and gate me back to Haagenti. This was it. I had only one chance to try and take her as she grabbed me. Once she activated the elf button, I’d be in Hel. Then I wouldn’t just have her to kill; I’d have Haagenti and his entire household.
I saw a shadow come towards me and I shook my head, desperately trying to regain control of my senses. My legs didn’t work properly, and I scooted on my rear trying to evade what I thought was Busyasta, and prepared my blast. Just as things came into focus, I saw a head rolling to stop a few inches from my feet. Busyasta’s head.
