The back door of the bar didn’t look like much. There was a dirty trash can outside of it and a stray cat that hissed as I approached. I reached down to offer my hand to the mangy thing, wishing I had a little food to offer her. She hissed again, but finally found the courage to sniff my hand. She rubbed against my knuckles, and her small body vibrated as I tickled behind her ears.
“Shhh,” I whispered to her. “Go on, now. You might want to be clear of this place before I go in.”
The cat meowed in protest and rubbed against my leg before trotting off toward the dumpster and the dark tree line beyond.
I straightened and cleared my throat. This was it.
I knocked once on the rickety wooden door and waited.
A minute later, a big, burly man about six inches taller than me answered. His face was covered in a thick red beard, and he looked down at me with eyes as black as night.
“I think you knocked on the wrong door, brother,” the man said. “You want a drink, you go around front.”
I shook my head once. “I need to talk to Jereth.”
The man snorted and rubbed his thumb under his nose. “Yeah, good luck with that,” he said. “Jereth don’t see no one without an invitation, and so far as I know, he hasn’t invited anyone out here tonight. Why don’t you just turn back around and head back to whatever hole it is you crawled out of.”
“I’m not leaving until I talk to him,” I said. The power I’d stolen from the trees pulsed through my veins like a drug, pumping me up and winding me so tight, I wasn’t sure how long I could hold that energy inside.
I was ready to mess something up, and this guy looked to be as good a place to start as any.
“Don’t make me ask again,” I said. Ice formed on my fingertips, spreading quickly up my hand and arm with a crackling that was noticeable even with the loud music pouring from inside.
The bouncer narrowed his eyes, glancing toward my icy gloves and back up at my face. “I think you’re out of your league here, demon,” he said. He spit tobacco juice to the ground, a long string of it getting caught in his beard before he wiped it away. “Now, get your—”
I got tired of waiting to hear what he was going to threaten me with next.
I flicked my index finger forward, sending a thread of blue ice across the pavement between us. The ice grabbed onto his boots and spread quickly all the way up his body, encasing him in a dim blue light. I paused the ice when it got to his neck.
He struggled against the frozen prison, his lips shivering and turning blue.
“What the hell, man?” he asked.
“Still think I’m out of my league?” I asked.
“S-s-screw you,” he said.
I shook my head. That was the thing about rogue demons who got involved with people like Jereth. They took whatever they wanted from this world and met little resistance along the way. It went to their heads, and they got power hungry, forgetting that there were still things that went bump in the night. Things they would have been afraid of if they were smarter.
“I don’t have time for this,” I said. I lifted my finger and the demon screamed as the ice crept up his neck and surrounded his face. His eyes were frozen in a look of sheer terror.
I stepped around him and opened the back door of the honky-tonk, giving the block of ice a hard kick as I passed.
The demon fell onto the pavement, the ice shattering into a million tiny pieces, what was left of his power dissipating into the air as the ice began to melt.
I shook my head and sighed. One hell of a start to the evening, and I had a feeling things were about to get a whole lot worse.
Whatever Came Next
I walked down the steps leading to Jereth’s lair. Call it a bar or a gang or a club, but in the end it was just a lair. The kind of dark, desperate place demons like Jereth hid themselves in when they wanted to make deals with the devil.
The air was filled with smoke and loud music, and the only lights in the place were coming from the huge TV screens and a single lamp hanging above the pool table where two demons battled it out for a stack of cash. I spotted Jereth before anyone spotted me.
He was twice the size of a normal man, if not in height than in pure muscle. His hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail that snaked around his shoulder and down his chest. His arms and neck were heavily tattooed, and he wore actual chains around his body, hooked in crisscross patterns across his chest and legs. His weapon of choice—a semi-automatic rifle he called Lyla—leaned against the arm of his leather recliner.
I counted fifteen other demons besides Jereth in the bar, including the bartender. Not great odds.
I reached into my pocket and drank down the first potion. Swiftness. For the next twenty minutes, I would move faster than any three of them combined. I had no idea if it would be enough, but at least it was an advantage.
I walked down the steps, letting my boots hit each of the wooden stairs with a loud thump. The music stopped at the flick of Jereth’s wrist, and everyone in the dark place turned to look at me.
“You know, next time you send a message that you have information for me, you might want to let your bouncer know I’m coming,” I said, taking a handful of pretzels from a bowl on top of the bar and taking my time chewing one up. “You’re going to need another one of those, by the way.”
The two guys sitting on the leather and chrome stools next to me stood up, their eyes flickering toward the steps as if they expected old redbeard to come walking down. They could stop looking. That guy was gone for good.
Jereth held up a hand and everyone who had bristled at my bouncer comment relaxed and sat back down.
“I see you’ve been talking to Riley,” Jereth said.
“He said you might know something about what happened to Harper,” I said. “Do you?”
“Do you have payment worthy of such precious information?” he asked.
“Depends on what you want,” I said. I took a leather pouch from the pocket of my hoodie and set it on the bar, making sure I did it hard enough for the gemstones inside to clatter together. There was nothing off-the-grid demons wanted here in the human world more than gemstones. The rarer they were, the better.
For most demons, traveling between worlds was difficult. Portals were hard to come by unless you were prepared to wait for the Order to open one. And even then you had to be ready to fight an entire coven of powerful witches in order to use it. Not everyone had a magical rose garden like we did.
“Name your price,” I said.
“It’s going to take a lot more than a handful of gemstones for this information,” he said. “If I tell you what I know, it could put my entire crew in danger.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
A slow smile crept across his face and he shared a look with the demon woman sitting on the arm of his chair. He nodded to her, and she walked into the next room, shutting the door behind her. He’d either sent her to retrieve something, or he was trying to get her out of the way for whatever came next.
I rested my hand on a small dagger tucked into the waistband of my jeans. It wasn’t much, but it was pure demon steel and would kill a demon faster than any bullet or poison they could make here in the human world.
“Come have a seat,” Jereth said, motioning to the worn black leather couch across from him. “Let’s negotiate.”
“I’d rather stand,” I said.
“No. You want what I have, you follow my rules,” he said. “Sit down.”
I gritted my teeth and sat down on the couch. I didn’t like that there were half a dozen demons behind me where I couldn’t see them. It made me anxious.
“Okay, I’m sitting,” I said. “Let’s talk. What do you have?”
“I may know where Harper is being kept,” he said. “But before I tell you, I need to know you’re willing to pay up.”
“Whatever it takes,” I said. But I didn’t think this guy really knew anything important. What he knew was that if he did what
the emerald priestess asked of him—get me here alone—she’d pay him a lot more than I ever could. I was just playing along until shit went down.
And apparently, I wouldn’t have to wait long.
Two demons wrapped silver chains around my neck from behind, pulling so tight, I could hardly breathe. I had a split second where I could have shifted before the silver touched my skin, but I decided to stay put. Let Jereth believe he had the upper hand on me.
“I want something from you that doesn’t fit inside some little leather bag,” Jereth said, standing.
His girlfriend returned from the other room with a needle that would have made a nurse pass out. The needle itself was at least six inches long and was attached to a large glass vial. I didn’t see anything inside the vial, though, which meant they weren’t planning to inject something into me. They were planning to take something out.
Things had just escalated to seriously messed-up. I hadn’t expected a fellow free demon to jump right to stealing my power, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else from someone like Jereth. He had no qualms about betraying his own if he thought there was a better payday around the corner.
“I knew you were a real bastard, Jereth, but I didn’t think you’d stoop this low,” I said. I slowly reached toward my left pocket. “We could have agreed on terms before you threatened to steal something from me.”
“After the last time we met, I honestly didn’t know if you’d come here tonight,” he said, standing to take the needle from a tray his girlfriend held out to him. “That’s the problem with you do-gooders. You’re always underestimating what those of us who don’t give a damn about taking the high road are willing to do when the opportunity presents itself. Now stay still. This is going to hurt.”
He stepped toward me, and I shoved my hand into my pocket, grabbing hold of a handful of dust. Rend had recently discovered that when he infused certain gemstones with a particular type of magic and ground those gems into dust, it became a powerful weapon. I only hoped it worked.
I threw the dust into the air and held my breath. It hovered above me like a glittering cloud, and everyone’s eyes snapped toward it. I closed my own just in time as the cloud exploded in a brilliant light.
The demons holding the chains let go and stumbled backward. Jereth dropped the needle at his feet and cursed, reaching for his eyes.
Yeah, this is going to hurt alright.
I threw off the chains and shifted to smoke, flying through the room to first break the light and then smash the televisions so that the entire place was thrown into complete darkness. I had no idea if any of the demons in the room shared my particular talent, but it was likely that the majority of them couldn’t see in the dark. Advantage number two.
I took the dagger from my waistband and shifted back to human form behind Jereth’s girlfriend. She screamed as I pressed the tip of the blade into her neck against her pulsing artery.
“Make one move, and your girlfriend is dead,” I said. “I know you can’t see me right now, so you’ll have to trust me.”
Jereth blinked, his eyes bleeding from the explosion. He fumbled for the rifle next to his chair, and I didn’t hesitate. I pushed the blade into the girl’s throat as hard as I could, not stopping until it came through the other side of her neck. She went limp in my arms and then fell onto the floor with a thud, her body shimmering briefly with light before she turned to dust and was gone.
I gathered my energy into my hands, the dim blue glow illuminating the room just enough for the others to see what I had done. Blood coated my dagger and my clothes.
“Saki?” Jereth asked, his nostrils flaring as he looked at me. “You’re going to pay for this, Wrath.”
“I told you not to move,” I said.
I sent a single thread of ice through the floor toward his gun. The black exterior froze quickly, and thanks to Rend’s swiftness potion, I was able to conjure a sharp icicle and send it flying toward the gun before Jereth’s hand even landed on the strap.
The entire thing burst into shards of ice, its bullets pouring onto the floor and rolling across the hardwood.
Jereth motioned toward his crew. “What are you standing there for? Get him,” he said. “And make sure he survives.”
A breeze blew across my skin as every demon in the room shifted and flew toward me. I was faster, though, and was long gone before they reached me.
I landed on top of the bar, reforming quickly and gathering more power in the palms of my hands. A pitcher of water the bartender had been using to clean glasses sat on the counter, and I grabbed it, quickly throwing it onto the hardwood floor. I didn’t need water to create ice, but it would help.
I sucked in a huge breath and waited for the cold to form inside my core. On the count of three, I blew the air from my lungs toward the floor. Frost poured from my mouth and coated everything from the hardwood to the couch and the coffee table in a thick layer of ice. Every demon in the room was standing on it, and before they could react, I stood and lifted my palms toward the sky with a sudden jerk.
Jereth and five others were quick enough to shift and move away from the ice, but the nine who weren’t so lucky were impaled with sharp spikes that rose from the floor and through their feet. It wasn’t enough to kill them, but the pain was significant enough to keep them from casting magic for a while. Blood poured onto the ice, melting it quickly. And as the ice melted, the blue glow it emitted went with it, throwing the place into darkness once again.
I needed to move.
I leapt off the bar, shifting in mid-air and flying toward the dusty ceiling of the bar. As I flew, I reached into my right pocket and took out another of Rend’s potions. This one was a shielding potion.
In order for my plan to work, I was going to have to let them catch me. I wasn’t looking forward to that part. I downed the potion and prayed it would be enough to keep me from losing any valuable part of myself. Like an arm. Or my foot.
Or worse.
Several demons cast orbs of light into the air, and the ones who were uninjured and ready to fight searched the darkness for signs of movement.
I darted quickly between the shadows, but a beast of a demon I recognized from my last encounter with Jereth spotted me. Great big black snakes slithered out of his palms, their jaws opening to reveal long white fangs that dripped with poison. He threw a snake at me and one of its fangs nicked the side of my arm as it soared past. It ripped my favorite hoodie, but didn’t touch my skin.
In seconds, snakes covered the entire floor in a writhing mass. I searched for a safe place to land, finally deciding on the pool table.
Jereth’s eyes searched mine, red and angry. He hadn’t expected me to put up this much of a fight, and he intended to make me pay.
Good. I needed him to be irrationally angry. I needed him to want to take it too far before the emerald priestess was ready. His actions would draw her out. All I had to do was keep pissing him off, which was pretty darn easy.
I reached into the inside pocket that Essex had sewn into my hoodie for me and took out a handful of green dust this time: emeralds mixed with poison magic.
I threw it into the air as far as I could and backed away. A green cloud formed in the center of the room over several of the injured demons. Thunder rumbled from inside it and a streak of lightning lit up the room. Then the rain started. Acid rain, strong enough to rip the flesh off a demon in human form. Possibly strong enough to kill him.
Screams echoed off the walls in the dark room, occasional strikes of lightning illuminating the faces of those caught in the rain and too weak to move. Their flesh bubbled and disintegrated, dripping off their bones like honey.
Jereth roared and reached for the chains across his chest.
I knew he’d reached his limit with most of his loyal crew dying right before his eyes. He wasn’t going to let me live, no matter what the emerald priestess had agreed to pay him.
He gathered his chains in his hands, wrapping them around
his knuckles twice before shifting and flying toward me. I could have moved, but it took great willpower to stay put. To pretend I wasn’t fast enough to dodge him.
Silver exploded in my vision as he reformed right in front of me and punched me in the face. I flew backward ten feet, crashing through the wall on the other side of the room. I winced and reached for my eye. He’d hit it just right, and I’d probably lose my vision in it for a full week or more, even if I still had the power to heal myself.
I knew the guy was strong, but maybe I’d underestimated him. That was just his first blow, and from the look in his eyes as he walked toward me, I knew he had bigger things in store for me.
He threw his chains toward me and they elongated, almost as if the steel could stretch. The ends of the chains wrapped around my wrists, and Jereth yanked me forward, smashing my head against the edge of the pool table before I fell in a heap on the floor.
I struggled to stand, but everything hurt. The steel chains were not human-made, either. They were enchanted with some kind of fire locked inside. When I stared hard enough, I could see the flames flickering through the metal sheen.
The skin on my wrists sizzled, and I tightened my jaw against the pain.
Just hold on. She’ll show up. She has to.
Jereth knelt at my side, bringing his face so close to mine I could smell the garlic on his breath from dinner.
“You should have joined my crew back in the day when I invited you,” he said. “I could have freed your power from those witches. They owed me a favor, but no. You were too honorable to join a crew like ours.”
He looked around at the demons who had fallen. There were only three standing with him now.
“I never expected you to be able to nearly clear a room like that,” he said. “With your little bag of tricks, you have some real strength. But it wasn’t enough, Wrath.”
He tugged on the chains, and I groaned involuntarily at the pain that ripped through me.
“You’re going to die,” he said, leaning even closer. “And I’m going to make it last.”
Forgotten Darkness Page 24
