by D. N. Hoxa
“No way in hell.” It wasn’t going to happen.
“What if someone sees your face?”
“There’s nobody around here.” I was right—nobody was walking the streets, but…
“There’s plenty of cars driving by. If what you said is true, we can’t risk it.”
He was right, of course, and I wished I could have stayed behind. I’d have laid down on the backseat and waited for him to return, except we had no idea who’d arranged that meeting, and Adrian couldn’t fight against a demon. I wasn’t going to risk his life just because some assholes were after me.
“We can sit here and talk about it until death do us part, or we can get this over with and check out the neighborhood before our host arrives,” I said and showed him my new mask. “I’ve got my face covered, in case you didn’t notice. Even if somebody sees me, they won’t recognize me.”
“Goddamn it.” He rested his head on the steering wheel for a second. He already knew he’d lost. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Willow. Are you sure about this? For all we know, my brothers could have somehow arranged this. Or he did.” He meant the Devil.
“I’m sure,” I said without hesitation.
Perhaps I should have thought about it for a little longer. Too bad that occurred to me a little too late.
Chapter Twelve
The building was very quiet. We walked around the entire block to see if there was anything suspicious, but we found nothing. Five people passed us by in the process, and other than looking at me like I was a freak for covering my face with a tank top, nobody tried to kill me. I didn’t allow myself to think about it. There would be time to try and figure that out. For now, we had a meeting to attend to. I just wished I could breathe a little easier through that shirt. Also, my face was itchy as hell.
The hallways inside the building were strangely quiet. There were six apartments in total, and it looked like nobody was home in any of them. We had no idea where we were going to meet the note sender because he hadn’t been very specific, but I trusted he would find us. Or we would find him.
“I think it’s time you parted ways with one of those bone knives,” Adrian said and stretched out his hand to me.
I wanted to laugh in his face, tell him he was insane if he thought I would give away my knives. But he was right. If it came to it, only demon bone could really hurt a demon. Cursing under my breath, I gave him one of the two knives I was holding before taking out my third and last one.
“If I die tonight, you have to promise me something,” he said then, catching me off guard.
“You’re not going to die, Adrian.” I wouldn’t let that happen.
“But if I do, you have to promise not to kill my brothers,” he said. “Can you do that?”
“I…” My voice trailed off. Just that he looked so…so…exposed. What the hell had I gotten myself into with this guy?
“It wasn’t their fault. Our father is our everything. He’s the best man we know.”
“You can’t ask that of me. It’s not fair.” My voice sounded muffled, but he could understand me.
“Nothing’s ever fair, and that’s okay. You would have done the same.” Damn him, but I would have.
I didn’t want to give in, but most importantly, I didn’t want to make him a promise I couldn’t keep. What if I would have no other choice? They could come for my mother. The bad guys in the movies did it all the time. They went after the people you loved to get to you, and if that happened, I wasn’t going to hesitate.
But I didn’t know how to tell him that. So I changed the subject.
“Tell me about your dad.” The way he spoke about him was extraordinary, or maybe it was just me.
Adrian smiled. We were by the entrance doors of the building, waiting, and we’d see whoever came our way. For now, we were safe. We had another fifteen minutes until midnight.
“He’s a big guy, same as my brother Doc. He’s from around here, but he moved to New Jersey when he married my mother and she inherited the house from her aunt. Said he’d follow her to the moon if she asked him to—and he wouldn’t even need a suit.”
That had to be one of the most romantic things I’d ever heard. “He sounds really sweet.”
“Oh, he’s not sweet. He was sweet with Mom but not with others. He was hard on us boys, and he taught us everything we know. He said he wanted the world to be grateful for his sons, not regretful.” He flinched. “And we blew it.”
There was nothing to say to that, so I didn’t.
“He had another family before, here in Manhattan. A wife and a daughter. They died in a car crash, and my dad was the only survivor.”
Poor guy. That must have been awful. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. Though I’d have loved to have a sister, I’m used to it by now,” said Adrian.
“What about your mom?” I’d figured that she died, but I’d never had the chance to ask him.
“Mom died when I was six years old. She had heart problems all her life. One day, she just couldn’t take it. She went to sleep and never woke up.”
My eyes stung with tears I didn’t want to shed. It wasn’t fair to Adrian, but fuck. He’d been only six years old. I couldn’t make myself say sorry because sorry sounded like a stupid joke in the situation. It just wasn’t enough. No word was.
The silence that followed was comfortable for a change. We were both in our own heads, thinking about everything we’d gone through to get here. It’s why the freezing cold that suddenly slipped through me made me jump.
“What? What is it?” said Adrian, but he already knew. My body adjusted to the cold and welcomed it as if it were a part of me. Maybe it really was.
“He’s here,” I said, looking around the street.
“Demon?” he asked, and I confirmed with a nod. Nobody had come or gone our way. So how had the demon come close enough to us for me to feel him?
“The wine shop,” I whispered. It was the only explanation. The wine shop could be accessed through the back, unlike the apartments.
Adrian grabbed me by the arm before I could move. “Please be careful.”
“I will.” And he would be, too. We had no other choice.
The lights of the wine shop were off, and we couldn’t see anything through the windows—just lots of shelves and lots of wine bottles. Still, I tried the front door because we’d been invited. It made no sense that the note sender would want to keep us out.
I was right. The door opened with a loud cling. My knives were in my hand, and I was prepared for whatever was coming. Taking in a deep breath, I stepped inside with Adrian in tow. The three main shelves were mounted on the pillars of the building. The shop was bigger than it looked from the outside, with red brick walls and wine cases one on top of the other every few feet, which made hiding behind them a breeze. Small, dim lights above the shelves helped us see but not as much as I’d have liked. I couldn’t tell which way the icy feeling was coming from—just that it was in the room. I had two options: to call the demon out or search for him.
Searching for him would put us at a disadvantage because this was obviously his territory and he knew it better than we did. So…
“Quite the collection you’ve got here,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. “How about you show me your face now?”
Silence followed. For a second, I thought I’d made a mistake. What if whoever was in there didn’t know we were coming?
Something moved to our left, and the silhouette of a man appeared at the very end of the shop. Adrian and I turned to him while he slowly walked into the dim lights until we saw his face.
My jaw hit the floor. “You!”
Him! It was him! Fucking Cirko!
I shot forward as fast as I could but walking around the wine cases was like walking through a freaking maze.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy!” Cirko shouted, raising his hands up, but I wasn’t about to.
“You sonovabitch!” I spit, my knives
in hand, so ready to cut right through him. A wine shelf that reached my hips was the only thing between us now, and I raised my right hand to throw a knife right at his face.
“Stop!” he shouted, and I did.
Not because he said stop but because he took out a gun and aimed it at my chest.
“Fuck, just stop, okay? Stop for a second,” he said, breathing heavily, and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I called you here. The least you can do is give me a second.”
“A second so that you can shoot me and be done with it?” I said, more angry at myself than at him. “I should have known.”
“If I wanted to shoot you, I wouldn’t have called you here, Willow. And why do you have that thing on your face? I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said, his voice high pitched.
He was right—we were inside now. Nobody was going to see me. And that shirt was itchy as hell, so I took it off. God, that felt good. I could breathe easy again.
“Don’t tell me you missed seeing my face,” I said with a grin. “Because I missed making you bleed, very much.”
Cirko shook his head. His finger was on the trigger, so he wouldn’t need longer than a split second to take me out. And Adrian was behind me. He could shoot both of us before we could get to him. No, I had to make him lower his gun or move closer before he fired.
“For fuck’s sake, just let me talk,” Cirko said, and he wasn’t even kidding.
“But we’re not here to talk, are we? You invited me here to kill me, and that’s okay. An eye for an eye. But I’m not going to make this easy for you, just so you know.” Gun or no gun, Cirko wasn’t a fighter. I was.
“I didn’t invite you here to kill you.” He was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had because he wasn’t dead yet. “I brought you here to talk. If you could just listen—”
“So why pull the gun out?” Adrian cut him off. “If all you want to do is talk, lower the gun.”
“I can’t! She’ll try to kill me again!” Cirko cried, shaking his gun at me. He got that right, at least. “Look, I don’t want to be here any more than you do, okay? I really do need to talk to you.”
“Jesus Christ, just talk already! Spill it out,” I said. My patience was wearing thin. If he would just lower that gun of his, this would be over very quickly.
“There’s a demon who’s killing people, and she needs to be taken down,” he said in a rush. “She’s a vampire, and she’s killing for the fun of it, mostly tourists but others, too. It’s been going on for a few months now, and you and your kind haven’t done anything about it. Why is that, Willow?”
I had to assume he was joking, so I laughed. “Do I really look like a fool to you?” But he didn’t answer.
“A few days ago, she went after my friend. I barely got him out, but I can only keep him hidden for so long before she finds out. And she’s not going to stop, so you need to stop her,” he said.
Of course I didn’t want to believe him, but why did it feel like he was telling the truth?
“Why not take her out yourself? You obviously have a gun,” Adrian said.
“And my knife.” He’d left that alley with one of my knives in his gut the last time we’d seen each other.
“Because I’m not a killer,” Cirko said. “I wouldn’t know where to even start. I can’t do it. She’ll see me coming from a mile away, and she’s much stronger than me.”
“Let me ask you something—do you really expect us to believe any of this?” I turned around and looked at the street outside the windows. “How many of them are coming as we speak?”
It made sense for this to be a trap, didn’t it? Bring me here, stalling with this bullshit talk about a vampire killing people for fun until God knows how many demons came running through the door to kill us.
“No one is coming! Fuck, you’re impossible, Willow!” Cirko shouted and began to laugh hysterically. “This was a mistake. I should have never come to you for help.”
Adrian wrapped his fingers around my arm and made me lower my hand. “I think he’s telling the truth,” he whispered, throwing me off guard.
“Are you kidding me? He’s a demon.”
“You know what?” Cirko said, still laughing like he’d really lost it. “Just take it.” He put the gun on the shelf in between us. “I’m not going to shoot you anyway. Don’t know why I bothered. Here.” He reached into his pocket and took out my bone knife and laid it right next to the gun.
I didn’t hesitate. I put my hands on the shelf and jumped to the other side in a heartbeat. I grabbed Cirko by the shirt and slammed him against the shelves lining the wall, making more than a few wine bottles fall to the floor and break.
“Who have you told about me, Cirko?” I pressed the tip of my knife to his throat. His dark eyes were wide, and he was scared. Very scared. He had a right to be.
“No one,” he said through gritted teeth. I pushed my knife a little and drew blood. He hissed in pain.
“I’m going to ask you again—” But I didn’t get to finish.
“Willow, stop,” Adrian said. He was standing right next to Cirko, trying to see my face.
“Adrian, we can talk about this later.” A demon needed to die first.
“No, we’ll talk about this now. Let him go.” He put a hand on my shoulder.
What the fuck? I turned to look at him, expecting to see him laughing, but he wasn’t. He looked dead serious.
“Are you for real? He’s a demon!” Why didn’t he get that, for God’s sake?
“Yeah, and he could have killed us ten times by now, but he didn’t.”
“It’s just a game!” I shouted. “He’s just stalling so his friends can get here and they can finish us off together. This is probably some sick joke to them. Don’t you see?”
But Adrian shook his head. “What I see is that he’s scared and he could have killed us but didn’t. This is loaded.” He showed me Cirko’s gun. “I think we should listen to him.”
“Adrian, this is not the time to have this conversation. You don’t just listen to demons, okay? They’re demons!” How many more times did I need to tell him that before it got into his head?
“And I’m worse, but you listened to me,” he said and pulled me back. My knife was still against Cirko’s neck, though. “I’ve got the gun now. If he tries something, I’ll shoot him and you can finish him, okay?”
“Just five minutes,” said Cirko. “I’ve got proof. I can show you.”
I’ll be damned.
Adrian didn’t look like he was going to let it go. And more importantly, Cirko didn’t look like he was going to attack me any time soon. The guy was seconds away from pissing his pants, for God’s sake. This is not happening, I thought to myself, but it was. Shutting down every reasonable part of me that screamed not to do this, I put the knife away and stepped back.
Cirko wiped the blood from his neck and didn’t dare meet my eyes. Instead, he looked at Adrian. “Follow me.”
He took us to the back of the wine shop, through a hallway and into what looked like an office. A thin layer of dust covered the desk and the wine bottles. The blinds were drawn so nobody could see us from the outside. There was a strange smell hanging in the air, like something had gone stale, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“This is my friend’s shop,” Cirko said. “We’ll be safe here.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, demon, but you are not safe.” I showed him my knives. Just because I hadn’t killed him yet didn’t mean I wouldn’t. The only reason I was allowing him to talk was because of Adrian.
“Right,” Cirko said and sat behind the wooden desk. He pushed a pile of documents aside and took the laptop that had been hiding beneath them.
“Her name is Loretta. She came here from somewhere in Europe a couple of months ago.” He typed something on his laptop quickly and turned the screen to us. “This is her.”
The picture wasn’t very bright, but we could make out the profile of a woman with wavy red hair
and a smile that gave me the creeps. For a second, I was glad she wasn’t looking at me. She had a glass of wine in her hand, and she looked like she was enjoying herself, but we couldn’t see where she was because it was too dark.
“Go on,” Adrian said, saving me the trouble.
“She targets humans, mostly men, but women, too. She drinks them dry then gets rid of the bodies so others can’t find them.”
“And how does she do that?” I asked. You couldn’t just get rid of a body and hope no one will find it. Things like that always turned up.
“I don’t know, but I’ve heard she cuts them to pieces and feeds them to pigs,” Cirko said with a shrug. Ugh.
“Any reason why she kills these people?” Adrian asked.
“That’s the thing: she does it for fun. I heard she says it’s her Devil-given right to feast on humans or something. She’s insane, but she’s very dangerous. She’s been around for a long time.”
“You heard from who? Who told you all of this?”
“Just people,” Cirko said.
“You mean demons.” And demons weren’t people, no matter how they looked.
“Yes, Willow. Demons,” he said. His foot tapping the floor constantly was making me crazy. With a sigh, he rubbed his face raw—such a normal gesture. He sure could have fooled me had I not had my senses to tell me about his real nature.
“Look, my best friend is in danger, and it’s all because of me. I can’t let anything happen to him, do you understand?”
“Of course it was your fault!” I shouted.
“If I hadn’t taken him with me to that club last night, she would have never seen him,” he said.
Well…that wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind when he said it was his fault.
“So why did you take him there?” asked Adrian.
“Because I didn’t know she would be there, okay? I didn’t know!” Cirko said. His eyes were watery. Was he…crying?
Something was definitely wrong here. Demons don’t cry. As I said before and will say a thousand more times: he’s a demon.
