Old Man’s eyes blazed for a moment. The blue-green glow caught my attention. He pointed at the shadows around the church and the elm trees near it.
I watched the shadows stir. “That’s not the wind.” I counted seven of them and put up fingers, telling the Old Man how many I saw.
He raised an eyebrow and put up ten fingers, then four. I’d guessed wrong. A moment later, he put his hand on his face and shook his head in blatant disappointment.
I gave him the bird.
“Can you tell who or what they are?” Old Man asked.
Always testing. “Yeah, I can. Can you open the glove box?”
He did. “When did you put a mini bar in here?”
“A few weeks ago when I got charged five hundred bucks for a single drink at a trendy new night club.”
Sometimes L.A. really sucks.
“And humans call us demons.” Old man handed me a shot of Jack Daniels and poured one for himself.
Leona butted in, “This is what you guys talk about when you’re on a stakeout?”
We looked at each other, turned in the seat to stare back at Leona, then faced the church. I said, “Sometimes, Old Man gives me coloring books and crayons, but I’m not very good about staying inside the lines.”
We climbed out and got half way across the street before pack magic hit us, like a wall of ice. Ignoring it, Leona disappeared like the spirit beast she was. The air smelled sour as stale fear. Gibbering laughter crackled like goblin song, scraping the pavement like fallen leaves. Four-legged shadows with hell-fire eyes scampered around us.
“Illusion,” Old Man said, “an attempt to stampede us so we can be run to ground.”
We staggered, but managed another few steps. Undaunted, Old Man rumbled low in his throat, a sound of gleeful anticipation. My protective shield warmed to life and I winced, a splinter of ice driving like a nail between my eyes. Touched by my expanding shield, the red-eyed shadows dissolved. The wild laughter thinned and died with a last ghostly moan, and the air went back to smelling as polluted as ever. The wolves had just tried to take me out with pack magic.
We looked back toward the trees where the shadows had come from. There were more of them now, these ones real. Half of William’s pack came out into the open, spreading out between us and the church. Angie hung back, staying close to the building’s front double doors. William himself approached us, mostly in human form, but with hands turned to claws, his jaw distended, bristling with large pointy teeth—the better to eat you with.
William locked eyes with Old Man.
Big mistake.
The wolf was used to staring down his own kind. Someone should have told him meeting demon eyes was uniquely dangerous, depending on the demon in question. Old Man didn’t need pack magic to induce the chill of death, the paralysis of fear. He just had to bring his deeper self out of hiding. Tens of thousands had died to wash his honor clean. He was the Power that had shattered an island continent at the dawn of time. The towers of Atlantis had crumbled before his rage. The seas had answered his call. Savage storms had howled with madness, writing his name in runes of lightening on winding sheets of rain. With everything dear to him, Old Man had consigned his own demon race to a watery grave. It was why he was the last Atlantean.
William’s inner beast wouldn’t understand these things, but he’d feel nightmare squeezing his heart, melting his courage to the bone. He broke eye contact, his feet rooting to the pavement.
Old Man smiled. Darkness shadowed his face and his killing hand. Dark clouds piled up overhead. Thunder grumbled. Writhing snakes of lightning spun from thunderhead to thunderhead. The earth shuddered like a cowering behemoth.
I called to Old Man, “Don’t damage my city.”
“Not likely,” he said. “I am not as powerful as I once was.”
“Okay, I’ll take William and Angie. You take the rest.”
“No,” he said, “I’ve got William. You take the rest.”
Fading in, in mid-leap Leona shrieked, “Mine!” She dropped like a buzz saw onto William. They hit the ground in a whirling, snarled mass of fur, teeth, and claws. Blood streamed from gaping wounds. Blindly, William tried to pry the jungle cat off him. She had his head in her jaws, trying to crack it like an oversized egg. William went to pounding on her sides, trying to drive her ribs into heart and lungs. Making herself solid enough to attack, she was solid enough to take damage.
Old Man went to help her.
I spun to face the street behind me. Three new, oversized wolves were almost on me. I opened fire, glad a lot of my clips tonight were silver hollow-points. The wolves shook as I stitched with fire, round after round. Shredding silver carved up their internal organs, creating wounds that could not be healed by a werewolf. Their roars collapsed into hacking barks and yelps as they fell twitching at my feet, eyes glazing in death, blood pooling on the pavement.
I spun back to the Mission, resuming fire on the rest of the wolves.
I expected them to charge, but they held their ground, lifting muzzles to the sky, howling. Their song pierced the night, ringing out, stirring the short hairs at the nape of my neck. This wasn’t pack magic. Something worse. From the surrounding blocks, the call was echoed by new voices. There were even howls from inside the church.
The wolves had been recruiting. That meant the priests, the homeless, wandering thieves, pimps, and hookers tending their corners had been blooded, infected on a massive scale.
William had seen how things might go, and had sent out the missing members of his pack to build an army. The new converts wouldn’t be experienced wolves able to control themselves, able to take human form at will. They’d be driven by blood lust alone.
William was past caring about that, into a win-at-all-costs mentality. Worse, he was exposing us all to the human world. This kind of thing was why wolves had been banned from L.A. years ago.
As all that went through my head, I emptied my clips, reloaded, and resumed fire. The wolf voices at the Mission fell silent. My gaze slid to the doors of the church where Angie glared at me with utter hatred. Eyes blazing amber, she backed into the church.
The young wolf voices in the near distance fell silent. They’d come in now, looking for those that were pack, those that had called. When they found the wolves dead, the new ones would start killing everything in sight. Those they’d wound would rise as new wolves too, spreading the contagion in a feeding frenzy. From the screaming police sirens, I knew that the carnage was spreading.
Only their Alpha could stop this.
I yelled over to Old Man, “Hey, we’re going to need him. Don’t—”
C-Crack.
Damn. I know the sound of snapping vertebrae when I hear it.
I looked over. Leona was gone, probably ghosting away to heal and reconstitute herself. Old Man held Williams so his feet swung, toes scraping the sidewalk. The Alpha’s neck looked broken. His head swung loosely. His eyes were closed, his muscles lax. Old Man thrust a silver dagger into the wolf’s heart for good measure and tossed the carcass away, turning to stare into the surrounding darkness.
Lightning flashed, bleaching the world white for several heartbeats. Darkness crashed back in, and Old Man said. “They’re coming.”
“The new wolves? Yeah, I already figured that out.”
“No, something else.” His head lifted as if scenting the wind. “I feel a presence in the storm, riding in my sky.”
Leona reformed next to him, looking her usual self. Even William’s blood was gone from her black fur.
There was a shimmer of dark energy. Sarah appeared in a black robe, wearing that god-awful necklace of hers. She snatched the knife from William’s torso, pinning his face to her breasts. Tears dampened her face. She looked at me with human eyes filled with hate.
I bolted toward her.
Leona and Old Man swiveled to see what was happening.
Before any of us could reach them, William and Sarah vanished into thin air. I had the feeling I’d fi
nd them inside the mission. I started for the doors where Angie had retreated. “You guys got this?” I asked.
“Sure,” Leona said. “Go have fun.”
I pulled my straight katana out of thin air, still sheathed. The demon blade begged me to let it out to feed.
Soon, I promised. Soon.
TWENTY-THREE
“If you don’t want me to piss in the
holy water, don’t invite me to church.”
—Caine Deathwalker
In the mission’s front vestibule, a suspenseful silence held sway. The outside street lamps backlit the stained glass windows, spilling primary colors across midnight-red carpeting and up a wall. In the glow, I saw a wooden stand and a basin of holy water. Out of the light fall, both sets of double doors into the nave were open.
There were no smoldering red eyes in the inner shadows, but I knew an ambush had been set, so, of course, I had to go in.
Against my usual habit, I went in on the right, scanning empty pews that smelled of lemon Pledge. It wasn’t perfectly dark; the left wall had more stained glass. Shafts of red, blue, and gold knifed across the gloom. Sheathed katana in hand, I glided past the closed doors of confessionals. Alabaster saints on pedestals stared down at me from lofty heights, their expressions troubled.
I had the feeling they didn’t want me here.
As I passed the last confessional, its door splintered, ripping off the hinges with a loud crack echoing in the vaulted space. A wolf in human form leaped at me. Everything slowed in my mind as I dipped and wheeled out from under his fangs and claws. My sheathed katana trailed me, staying in his path. It struck him midair, glancing off his shoulder, breaking his collarbone as he went by. He landed on the carpet, tumbling into the end piece of a pew. Rebounding, the wolf spun, looking for where I’d gone. Pain and injury weren’t slowing him down. Werewolves heal too quickly for that. I swung the sheath a second time and broke his jaw.
Enough playing around.
As he staggered, I unsheathed my blade. Its voice strengthened, as did the hunger it shared with me. The blade was as much an opponent as the wolves. It would do its best to drain my will, to make me an extension of it, so it could kill forever, creating oceans of blood. This was the price I paid for so powerful a weapon. It was why I’d hesitated to draw it—until I heard the soft padding of wolves rushing me in the shadows.
There were plenty of red-eyed shadows now the trap was sprung, and Angie was in the lead, her face fuzzy, distorting as her change began. Without looking at the wolf I’d been fighting, I stabbed him through the heart. The meteoric iron of my straight katana couldn’t stop the wolf without taking off his head, but the demon blade possessed a soul of its own—a vampiric soul. The blade burned with a crimson aura, and I heard the howl of a wolf spirit as it was ripped from the wolf, into the blade.
More, the sword demanded. More.
Larger than regular wolves, possessing the full mass of the humans they’d been, four of the werewolves sprang, only Angie digging in and drawing back. She retained enough of her human side to understand the damnation my weapon offered.
In the heat of battle, things continued to pass with aching slowness. Not that I was slow. My sheath in one hand became a flail. The blade in the other cut the air, weaving a rune of death. Hitting solidly would have stopped my energy, immobilizing the weapon. I used it to scratch. Being a demon blade, a scratch was enough for it to slurp out the life force of two wolves in a moment. My sheath brained a wolf, making it shake its head in annoyance, shooting past me, missing. My sword took out another wolf with a cut on its spine.
The phantom voices of captured spirits thickened the air, wrapping around my sword, sinking into the metal.
I crouched with my blade next to my left hip, waiting for the return of the wolf that had lunged by. I didn’t look at it directly, but gazed across the pews so peripheral vision could catch both the turning wolf and anything Angie might do at the same time.
She turned tail—literally, fully wolf now—and ran for the front of the church. The last wolf charged. Claws scraped the air, barely missing me as I danced away, slicing my blade across Achilles tendons. The wolf’s spirit howled in despair, drawn into the sword as its body collapsed, in death.
I stared as the katana grew silent, temporarily sated. That wouldn’t last. The blood on the steel sank into the steel, an after dinner drink. I sheathed the blade once more. Dropping it from my hand sent it back to the armory in my vault.
With any luck, Angie was now leading me to Sarah and the Succubus. And Haruka of course. It had nearly escaped my mind that I was supposed to be rescuing her. Perhaps I get distracted too easily by my passions.
My automatics in hand, I stalked toward a door someone had opened for Angie. In her wolf form, she didn’t have hands to work the knob; she’d have busted through. And if the door had been ajar, I’d have spotted light bleeding into the sanctuary from the well-lit hallway. Halfway there, I heard the sound of shattering glass. I stopped to crouch and swing my guns toward the high, stained glass windows. Several of them had caved in, spraying razor-edged shards and broken lead fretting into the air. Amid the debris, Old Man and Leona hung a moment, then dropped as gravity caught up to them.
As a spirit beast, Leona hadn’t needed to break her window. I think she’d just thought it a fun thing to do.
I relaxed, straightening, focusing my senses on the door to the hall once more. Crunching glass underfoot, Old Man ambled up to me, Leona a step or two behind.
“This is as far as you’ve got?” Old Man said.
With the muzzle of the gun in my right hand, I pointed over my shoulder. “I stopped to play with some wolves back there.” I pointed the gun ahead at the open door. “Angie went that way. I was just about to go after her when you crashed the party. Why aren’t you guys outside, dealing with the new wolves?”
“That new force I sensed in the clouds?”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Slayers with glider packs, swords, and automatic weapons.”
“Quite a lot of them,” Leona said.
“We left the wolves to them,” Old Man said.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Slayers? In my town? Slayers were humans with a hard on for killing whatever goes bump in the night. They’re a secret society all about purifying the planet of preternatural threats. “We shut down their L.A. operation years ago.”
Old Man nodded once. “Guess they’re back in business.”
As if things weren’t complicated enough.
Leona said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky. They and the wolves could wipe each other out.”
Old Man and I looked at her silently.
“It could happen,” she said.
I started for the door. “I don’t have that kind of luck. Come on, let’s go.”
Low to the ground, quite a bit faster on four feet, Leona rushed ahead. “I’ll take point.”
“Okay,” I said, “but be careful. They know we’re coming, and Angie has a good nose.”
“Bitch will find out I’ve got good claws,” Leona said. “I never liked her.”
The hall took us to a kitchen where dishes filled a sink, trash waited to be emptied, and a few bodies cluttered the floor. A woman lay at my feet, black hair in a bun, eyes glazed by death, vacantly staring, her mouth opened in a silent scream. Her dress was tattered and soaked in blood as was the underlying flesh. A teenage volunteer,and a priest in black suit with white collar, were missing essential organs. They’d been attacked by wolves, and had not survived the transition into new wolves.
So much blood, a pretty contrast to the bloodless flesh, the frozen expressions of horror—beautiful! Wolves do good work. If only they were tidier about cleaning up…
I went into a dining hall with tables and benches. Cold food aged on paper plates. Paper cups were overturned, spilling Kool-Aid to mix with blood. There were more bodies. From the smell, quite a few of the homeless had unloaded in their underwear as death came for them with
claw and fang. There were kids here too. Many of hem had simply been batted across the room into walls, leaving red smears as they slid to the floor and fell over.
For some reason, my gaze snagged on an infant near a crumpled blanket on the floor. A rather large bite had removed half her torso. Tiny ribs were exposed. From the angle of her head, her neck looked broken. She had curly blond hair and small hands clenched in fists that had done her no good. Her life wasn’t any more valuable than anyone else’s had been. I couldn’t understand why my heart felt so dense inside my chest. You’d almost think I cared.
“No wolves here.” Leona paused to lap up some of the pooling blood.
I felt a cut across my pectoral muscles and jumped back, looking for the source of the attack. It hadn’t felt like a blade or claw tip. Magic? My protective tat had let it happen. I knew who this had to be. Sarah. Another cut opened, a rip across my side. Bitch! The wounds were shallow, teasing. The one that cut across the dragon tattoo on my chest had already healed since poison wasn’t involved this time. Was she hitting from a distance, or in the room, invisible to our senses? With that necklace of hers, either was possible.
“Old Man,” I yelled. “I need some fog. Fast!”
Not bothering to ask me why, he muttered beneath his breath, throwing out an arcane gesture or two. The air went from dry to damp at warp speed. Clouds formed around him. Billows expanded to choke the room, making us shadows to one another. Holding my PPKs out in at a forty-five degree angle, I scanned the fog for a human-shaped gap in the mists. If Sarah was here I’d know it. If she was attacking by some kind of remote viewing, I thought this would mess up her targeting.
Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) Page 17
