by Jenny McKane
“Not saying much,” Sunny muttered, as she looked away, and just as Gideon was going to fire back a retort, the door slowly opened, and Anya walked in. She walked to Gideon, giving Sunny a polite nod.
“It’s good to see you again, Sunshine,” Anya said with her soft, Russian accent, as she embraced Gideon. She was wearing a smart pantsuit that was an emerald silk and cut perfectly to her shape. Her hair was coiffed perfectly and twisted into a fancy chignon. Giant teardrop emeralds adorned her ears, and Anya looked every part the foreign heiress and not like she ran a brothel in the middle of Seattle.
Just goes to show Sunny what they say about making assumptions.
“You indicated you had something of interest for us?” Gideon asked, as Anya stepped away.
“Yes, yes,” she said, nodding. “Consider it a gift. Or a warning. I, myself, do not yet know what to make of it, but I leave that to you. You may do with it what you wish. You will excuse me if I have to return to my party? My guests have not been here for weeks since the attack and I must keep them happy.”
“Of course,” Gideon said as they embraced again, this time in goodbye. “We’ll be in touch soon.”
Anya nodded.
“Please,” she said. “In our next conversation, you can tell me what you make of it.”
Gideon assured her that he would, and Anya made her exit.
Sunny didn’t take her seat again because Gideon didn’t. Instead, he walked behind the couch and waited for whatever Anya had planned. Sunny wasn’t exactly thrilled about being the first thing in the room when the gift arrived, so she, too, walked around the couch and joined Gideon.
They didn’t have to wait long.
Two dark-suited burly men made their way into the room carrying a huge duffle bag between them. Sunny recognized them as the new armed security guards that Anya had hired since the attack and without much ceremony, they dropped the duffle bag on the floor with a loud thump.
The first man who had come through the door bent and unzipped the bag, upending it with a violent shake as a woman fell to the floor in a bound heap. She had her arms wrapped around her legs and her hands and feet were bound. A gag had been tied crudely through her mouth, and stringy, black hair covered her face to the point that Sunny couldn’t make out much by way of features.
“Mrs. Treinka said to dispose of the thing when you’re done with it,” the second man said as they made their way out of the room and closed the door behind themselves.
Sunny looked at Gideon to gauge his reaction at being left alone in the small room with whatever the hell Anya had managed to trap.
“Ten bucks says she caught herself a succubus,” Sunny said as joke, only she wasn’t really joking. “What are the odds that she just handed us Seumat with a bow on top?”
Gideon didn’t laugh and had come around the couch for a closer look at the female. Sunny had originally thought her dead, but she began moving and growling from behind the gag. Sure, she knew demons made crazy sounds sometimes and she’d even seen Seumat grow some awful looking fangs in her Claymation-looking mouth, but the stuff coming from the demon’s mouth weren’t normal. They were a bit bone chilling and almost animalistic.
Gideon knelt down and moved closer, going so far as the reach his hand out and move a few strands of hair from the thing’s face to look closer.
“Sunny,” he said. “Come here.”
Sunny wasn’t sure she wanted to, but she also didn’t want to chicken out at this point in the game after talking herself up to Gideon earlier in the morning. She could do this. She could so do this.
Peering closer to the demon while Gideon sat beside her, she saw the thing’s eyes were dulled. It looked less like a woman and more like some sort of sick, reanimated specimen.
“What the hell is wrong with it?”
Gideon stood up and took a step back, grabbing Sunny’s arm so that she wasn’t as close to it.
“Tainted.”
A simple word, Sunny thought, and one she hadn’t heard yet when it came to demons.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s a sickness that can happen among certain demon species, especially the higher ones,” Gideon said. “It’s like a plague. The infected demon will have a short period of super-accelerated strength and abilities, but the tainted virus will take the thing down soon or later.”
Sunny frowned as she looked at the demon on the floor.
“So,” Sunny said slowly. “What you’re saying is that there’s some nasty demon flu going around making the succubi germ carriers and ten times more dangerous?”
“More or less,” he said. “But I don’t think this is some common cold that’s passing from demon to demon each time someone sneezes. I think this is on purpose.”
Sunny blinked. There were probably a good number of reasons why someone might do something like that, but none of them seemed very controlled or a safe option.
“Any ideas?” she asked, but Gideon motioned for her to be quiet. He was watching the succubus warily now, as it had rolled on her back and was jerking.
“Is she dying?” Sunny asked, suddenly worried that she was about to witness something really violent and gross.
Again, Gideon shook his head. Before he could answer, the demon’s arms sprang free from the zip ties, and she kicked her legs out, too. She took one look at Gideon and hissed, her tongue elongated and forked at the end, as it jutted out a good six inches past her chin.
“Gross,” Sunny whispered. At the same time, she was incredibly grossed out and fascinated by the sight of it. Was that a virus thing or a special skill of the succubus?
“Move,” Gideon shouted as he grabbed Sunny seconds before the thing launched at them with its mouth wide open and the sharp teeth on full display. At the last second, Gideon pushed Sunny in one direction and he fell in the opposite, so the sick demon flew straight at a wall. Instead of hitting it like a sack of cement like a normal body would, the demon used its claws and whatever other goodies the virus had given it and scaled up the damn wall and onto the ceiling until it was suspended in the air, staring down at them, wheezing and hissing.
“This is so majorly screwed up, Gideon,” Sunny said, her voice higher than normal as she scooted backwards on her butt so that she wasn’t directly in the demon’s drop zone should the nails fail and the thing fall back down to earth.
“Stay away from it,” Gideon whispered. He must have seen Sunny patting her shirt for the blade strapped beneath it. “Don’t get near it. You won’t be able to hit it without it biting you first. Or worse.”
She didn’t know what the or worse part was, but Sunny knew it was probably awful.
And it wasn’t that Sunny was some kind of narcissist, but the demon had a serious preoccupation with Gideon and tracked every movement he made, as he stood and readied himself to square off with it. In an instant, it had retracted it claws, contorted its body, and landed on its feet in some Olympics-worthy dismount. Even though the demon hadn’t once looked at Sunny in the last few moments, she wasn’t taking any chances.
It circled Gideon; it’s clawed hands down at its side.
“The one they want,” the demon said, its voice no longer its own. Whatever the virus had done to it had ruined its vocal chords because the voice was weak and uneven and sounded painful.
“She’s nothing to us,” Gideon said, clearly meaning Sunny.
He didn’t get it.
“Not me, Gideon,” Sunny said, and the succubus didn’t turn toward her when she spoke. Hell, Sunny had a clear shot on the thing now if she needed it. “It’s you she’s talking about. You’re the one they want.”
Gideon moved to the left and the thing let out another shriek. Any more of these ungodly noises and Anya was going to have a thing or two to say about infected succubi ruining her party. As Gideon searched the small room for anything to use as a weapon, the demon took a step forward and crouched, readying itself to launch.
“Oh, hell,” Sunny said as s
he readied herself to break another one of Gideon’s rules. Just as the demon moved to spring at Gideon with talons and teeth, Sunny stabbed it straight in the back with the obsidian blade and pushed hard. The disintegration was instantaneous.
Chapter 27
It turned out that Gideon had heard rumors about tainted demons from some of his contacts that he had been pursuing the days prior. He had lent credence to the gossip and wanted to see for himself. He told Sunny that when Anya’s assistant called him and said they had a package for him, he knew it was code for they had something interesting for him to come look at.
Once the dust had literally settled, or dispersed as it was, Gideon and Sunny made their exit from Anya’s, having seen all the proof they needed, and knowing for sure there was something foul afoot in the demon realm.
On the drive back home, Gideon told her his theory that someone was poisoning the demon gene pool for nefarious purposes. Sunny had assumed it was Seumat, but Gideon thought the culprit was much more high-profile than that.
“Azriel?”
She hadn’t mentioned the demon in a long time, and saying his name felt odd and almost off limits. According to Plaxo, it was off limits.
“Perhaps,” Gideon said.
“I have a question,” Sunny asked, as they continue driving back to Gideon’s place.
“Go ahead.”
Sunny looked over in surprise.
“Really? You're going to answer me that easily?”
“Of course not,” he said with a laugh. “But you said you had a question, and I gave you permission to ask it. No promises that I’ll answer it.”
“Why do you have to be so cagey with information? Is it a demon thing?”
“It’s also an angel thing, and a human thing,” Gideon said. “I think it’s more a self-preservation thing, if I’m being totally honest.”
“That first day, when you got out of the vehicle at the diner, Michael said that you had a reason to obey him and finish this mission,” Sunny said. “What was it? What does Michael have over your head?”
Gideon let out a long, slow breath. And just when Sunny thought he wasn't going to answer her, he did.
“I did a great job hiding and staying under the radar when I first got free of the demon realm,” he began. “Michael managed to find me, however. And when he did, he threatened to mark me as a beacon so that Seumat, or any other asshole demon that wanted to find me whenever they wanted to could. It was basically coercion, and when I’m trying to work my own angles and get my own revenge, having an angelic beacon radiating off of me would not serve me well. If anything, it would land me back in the demon realm.”
What a shitty thing for Michael to do, Sunny thought. “Were you pissed? I would have been. If I had spent all that time trying to escape and reestablishing myself, to have some archangels threaten to send me back if I didn't cooperate with his little mission? I’m not sure I would have agreed.”
“Oh, don’t feel too bad for me,” Gideon laughed. “I’m pretty tactical. And just because I went along with it, doesn’t mean that I’m the victim. I’m not really good at playing the victim.”
“Ulterior motives, I see,” Sunny said nodding. “I can respect that.”
“To hell with respect, I need you to learn from it,” Gideon replied. He was serious, she could tell.
“You don't think I’m tactical?”
Gideon just snorted.
Well hell, Sunny thought to herself, she was just going to show Gideon how tactical she could be.
*****
After arriving home, well past two in the morning that night after Anya’s, Sunny was in no shape to meet Liam for their study date. She begged off with an excuse about feeling sick and felt a little bad for it.
Need me to bring chicken soup?
Sunny appreciated the sweet sentiment behind the text message, but she politely declined. As always. Maybe she was crazy for even thinking it, but it seemed like Liam was always trying to find some reason to bring her home, or see her home, or find whatever way he could to drive Sunny home.
She slept most of the Sunday away, knowing she had a long day at school the following day. Midterms were coming up, and all of the instructors were hardcore into delivering study material. And Sunny had a payment to make for her tuition. She was dreading it.
*****
“What on Earth do you mean?”
Sunny was feeling just a little panicky and unbalanced. The woman behind the counter seemed nonplussed. Like it was an everyday occurrence that she told a poverty-stricken student that they did not owe a payment on their balance.
“I mean,” the woman emphasized, as she pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, “that you do not have a payment due until next year.”
“That’s impossible,” Sunny said. “Two weeks ago, I came in here and had to beg for an extension and now you’re telling me there is no payment due at all? Was there some sort of mistake? Was my balance was paid by some other student’s financial aid?”
The woman did some more tapping of her keys, a little aggressively, Sunny might add, and sighed.
“I don't know what to tell you, miss,” the woman said. “All I can say is what I see on my screen, and it says that there is no balance for you to make a payment on. Thank you. Next!”
Without waiting for Sunny to even get all of her paperwork off the counter, the next student in line behind her shoved his way forward, making Sunny shuffle to get everything out of the way.
Sunny walked to her class in a daze. What the hell had happened? She knew she should be relieved and excited to have such a windfall happened to her. But she was worried. She was waiting for the bottom to fall out, because it usually did.
Even two hours later, as she sat behind the counter at The Little Lamb, Sunny could not believe her luck. Or that it happened to her.
“You look like something’s upsetting you,” Kitty said, as she walked in from the back door.
She had an arm full of yarn that she was using to create a Thanksgiving cornucopia in the front window. It was actually kind of cute, and Sunny paid attention to how she crafted it.
“Just had kind of an odd day, I guess,” she said.
“Huh,” Kitty said. “I bet it’ll get even more odd before the day is out.”
Now just what did that mean?
“Do you know something that I don’t know, Kitty?” Sunny asked.
“Maybe,” the old lady said, as she walked away. “Maybe not.”
What in the hell was going on?
When Kitty went for her afternoon espresso break, Sunny sat down at the counter and looked over the invoices. She needed to enter them into the computer billing system, so that Kitty could authorize the checks to the vendors. As she was working her way through the stack of papers, she heard a shuffling behind her.
She turned to see Plaxo standing there, which wasn't odd necessarily. But he had someone with him.
The newcomer was similar to Plaxo in height and build, but where Plaxo was the color of concrete, this dream demon was the color of moss.
“You bringing me a friend?” Sunny asked, confused.
Plaxo nodded.
“Nino is friend of Plaxo,” Plaxo began.
“Nino is Plaxo’s superior,” the newcomer corrected.
Plaxo frowned. “Nino is older than Plaxo by four days and thinks that makes Nino Plaxo’s superior,” Plaxo complained. He was pouting.
“Nice to meet you, Nino,” Sunny said. “I assume you’re here for a reason.”
Plaxo nodded his head solemnly.
“We bring troubling news, Lady Hunter,” Plaxo began.
Sunny gripped the pen in her hand. She knew the bottom would fall out sooner or later, she just thought it would be in the form of a letter saying that she had been kicked out of school for non-payment.
“What is it?”
“The demon sickness is spreading,” Plaxo said. “There have been three dream demons who have the taint, and countless s
uccubi. Our Alpha has decided that the dream demons will go into hiding. The elders believe this is an attack, and not a coincidence.”
It wasn’t a huge shock, actually, and it made sense for the dream demons to go into hiding.
“What does that mean for you, Plaxo?” Sunny asked. She had a feeling it meant he’d be leaving.
She was right.
“Plaxo is needed for a few days, maybe longer,” he said, the conflict on his face. It was clear he didn’t want to leave Sunny, and it pulled at her heart. What a sweet little dream demon she’d made a friend of.
“I understand,” Sunny replied, and she did, too. In all actuality, Plaxo didn’t owe Sunny anything. She’d just gotten used to his companionship, and despite his penchant for speaking in first person, he was a wise little demon with a sharp mind.
“Plaxo will not stay gone for long, only long enough to help the older ones and the young ones find a safe place to wait out the storm that is coming,” he said. “Then Plaxo will return and help Lady Hunter save Half Breed.”
That got her attention.
“Wait,” she said. “What?”
“Of course, Lady Hunter knows that all of this increased demon activity and even the bounty on Lady Hunter’s head has nothing to do with her,” Plaxo said, like it made all these sense in the world. “It is about the Half Breed and what sort of abilities a combination like that can create.”
Sunny suddenly felt a bit foolish. She’d been a little ego-centric to believe that there was a bounty poster with her face on it because the succubi wanted her dead. Of course not.
The succubi wanted the half-demon, half-angel creature, who might have abilities and capabilities that could be very useful to them.
“Oh,” Sunny sighed. “Of course, Plaxo. It makes sense.”
“Half Breed might be the ultimate weapon,” Plaxo said, his face dark.
“For whom?” First of all, Sunny really didn’t understand which side of the line might be making power moves. She assumed the demons, what with Azriel always lurking in the background somewhere, spreading demon viruses like confetti at a party.
