Reaping Willow

by D. N. Hoxa

  “We need drinks,” shouted Cirko so we could hear him over the music. It was so loud, the floor shook with the bass.

  “We’ll meet you by the stairs.” I grabbed Adrian by the arm. We didn’t want to get lost in the crowd.

  I’d been to clubs before, searching for demons, many times, but for whatever reason, it felt like a first. It was probably just Cirko’s fault for making Loretta sound like an invincible monster. She was just a demon. I had nothing to worry about.

  But no matter how many times I told myself that, I still did.

  When we got close to the stairs, I thought I saw a flash of red hair, but it could have just been the lights. It was too dark up on the second floor, and there was no way to see anything unless we were there. I looked at the bouncer in front of the red rope and wondered if Cirko knew him. If he didn’t, I was going to have to use my charms on him as well.

  Thankfully, the demon had remembered my drink. I drank the bourbon in one sip and felt the heat spreading all over me. It was nothing compared to Adrian’s kiss, but it would have to do.

  Adrian didn’t even bother to take a sip from his. He just held the glass in his hand and looked up at the second floor.

  “Come on,” Cirko said, and he led us through the crowd and to the stairs. The mask was itchy but only on my cheeks. I resisted the urge to scratch my face and mess up my makeup. Not yet.

  The bouncer didn’t exactly look happy to see Cirko in front of him, but when the demon slipped a hundred dollar bill into the pocket of his jacket, the man was all smiles. He stepped to the side and let us through all too eagerly. As I walked up the steep stairs, I was glad I’d worn sneakers; otherwise I’d have fallen on my face twice before we reached the top.

  The music was even louder up there for some reason. Black and purple leather sofas faced the ground floor, and three out of the five were free. Loretta in all her glory was sitting on the one at the very end of the floor, with two people by her side, a man and a woman. Her two guards were there, too, just like Cirko said, and they stood on either side of the table. The effect of the bourbon I drank faded when the ice-cold feeling of them slipped down my back and slipped into my skin. I’d never seen so many demons in one place before.

  “This is it, guys,” Cirko said, keeping his head down, though nobody was looking at us still. “I’ll meet you in the back.”

  He couldn’t come with us because he thought Loretta already suspected that he’d been asking around about her.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t just shift into someone else,” I said for the third time. He could do that—he could assume any form he wanted, but he refused.

  “Do you have any idea how painful it is to shift?” Cirko said. “Besides, I don’t exactly have a collection of hairs at the ready like you seem to think.” I did think that, actually, but I didn’t say anything.

  He left in a hurry, and Adrian took me to the first sofa in the line, right next to three guys drinking champagne with their eyes stuck to their phones. Why they even bothered to go out if they were just going to sit there and stare at their phones was beyond me.

  “It looks like she already has company,” said Adrian, trying to look casual. I sat at the corner of the sofa from where I could see Loretta. She was saying something to her guests, and they could have died laughing. They were completely enthralled by her, and it was no surprise. If perfection had a face, she would be it. I guess it would have been easy for me to get lost in her big, yellow eyes, too, if I didn’t know what hid behind them.

  “We need to go talk to her.” It didn’t matter that she was with someone—we could sit with her, too. After all, neither of her guests was wearing red. That had to mean something.

  “No, Willow. It’s best if we leave this for the next time. We were late,” Adrian said.

  “Are you kidding? We’ve been waiting for two days! We have no more time, remember? George comes back from his trip in three days.” And we both knew what needed to be done. “Besides, if we don’t take her down tonight, she’s going to kill those two.”

  “It’s too soon. We’re not prepared for it,” he said.

  I understood him. Really, I did. He’d never killed a demon before, but he had nothing to worry about. As soon as he stabbed one of those guards in the chest and saw him turn into black ashes, he’d be fine.

  “We are.” I stood up. “If you want to leave, go find Cirko, but I’m going in.”

  “Wait!” He grabbed my hand. “Be careful.”

  I thought he was going to leave me alone and go, but he didn’t. He put my hand over his arm and reluctantly walked with me to Loretta’s table. I’d never admit it to him, but I was glad he was with me.

  Their laughter reached our ears just as one of her bodyguards stepped in front of us.

  “Hey, there,” I said, pretending I didn’t feel like I was standing on ice-cold snow. The man was big and wide, with yellow eyes and a face created to make his enemies run the other way. But not me. I was all smiles.

  “Turn around and leave,” the bodyguard said with a heavy accent I couldn’t quite place. Shit. My smile wasn’t working.

  “I just thought we could—”

  “Rene, who’s that?” a woman said, and I could have sworn her voice was made in heaven. She sounded like a freaking angel—with an accent, but not as heavy as her bodyguard’s.

  Rene stepped to the side. Loretta hit me with the full force of her gaze. Fuck, she was beautiful. Even knowing what she was, I was envious. Her hair shone under the lights in perfect waves. She wore a sparkly white dress with spaghetti straps that hugged her small frame perfectly, and she had the legs of a freaking model.

  “Hi!” I said, waving my hand. “I was just wondering if we could join you. It gets really boring when it’s just the two of us, you know? And you look like you’re having fun.”

  I nailed it. Seriously.

  “What are you hiding behind that mask, lovely?” she sang, waving her champagne glass at me. “Take it off.” The man and the woman sitting by her side looked at me like they wanted me to die already. They wanted Loretta’s attention all to themselves, it seemed.

  Adrian tightened his grip around my fingers. I wanted to tell him that it was okay, but I didn’t dare look at him for fear she’d realize what was happening. I reached behind my head and untied the masquerade mask. This was going to work. She was going to let us sit with her and then take us to the VIP room, where we could finish her off.

  I smiled when I took the mask off, and she saw my face. She smiled, too. Thank God.

  But…

  “You’re far too beautiful to be hiding behind masks. Why don’t you find me tomorrow, and I’ll show you a good time.”

  Then, she waved at her bodyguard again.

  “Actually, I was thinking—” Rene stepped in front of me, blocking my view of her.

  “Now you leave.”

  “Let’s go,” said Adrian, pulling me back.

  “No, wait. We don’t mind the company. Really, the more the merrier, right?” I said, loud enough for Loretta to hear me, but she didn’t call for her guard again. Instead, she was laughing at whatever the man sitting next to her said. And Rene didn’t look like he was going to step aside again.

  Shit, shit, shit. This had not been what I was expecting. I mean, I was wearing red, for God’s sake! Did that mean that I’d gone through all that trouble of searching online for nothing?!

  Adrian wanted to stop and sit down on our sofa where a bottle of champagne and two glasses awaited us, but I didn’t let him. This was not over. It didn’t matter that Loretta didn’t want to take us to the VIP room—we knew the way ourselves.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It took another hour and a half, but finally, we saw Loretta and her guests follow her bodyguards into the double doors on the other side of the second floor. The door to the back was behind the bar, and Cirko was sure that nobody would try to stop us when we went through it because he’d knocked out the guard, tied him u
p and took him out the back.

  We slipped through the wide corridor with three doors to the sides, and opened the third one on our right, as per Cirko’s instructions. Now was not the time to dwell on the fact that I was trusting a demon to lead me into the unknown.

  The door led us to a stairway that went both ways, and we climbed up. At the top was Cirko, waiting for us with his bag in hand. We’d already told him via text that Loretta hadn’t let us join her, so he wasn’t surprised to see me there. I took off the mask, finally able to scratch my cheeks like I’d wanted to all night.

  “Get your guns,” Cirko said, opening the black bag on the floor. He took the rifle, Adrian took one of the shotguns, and they each took two of the Glocks. Since I was wearing a fucking dress that had served me nothing at all, I had nowhere to put the guns, so I was left only with my knives.

  “Behind the door is a dark hallway and six VIP room separated by curtains. We’ll probably see the guards in front of Loretta’s room, and they’ll see us as well, which means we’ll need to shoot them down immediately,” Cirko said.

  “And Loretta will know something’s up,” Adrian said. “So we need to be fast.”

  “You handle the bodyguards, and I’ll run to her right away. Even if she knows something’s coming, I won’t give her too much time to prepare.” The knives were in my hands, and I didn’t like to waste time. There would be no talking—just stabbing.

  “Right,” Cirko said, exhaling loudly. “Here goes nothing.” And without warning, he turned around and pulled the door open. His rifle was in his hand, his finger on the trigger. I expected to hear gunshots right away, but silence followed instead.

  I stepped to the side behind Cirko and Adrian to look at the hallway ahead. It was wide, dark, and decorated with a lot of red roses on golden tables every few feet. Just like Cirko said, to the left were the rooms, but we couldn’t see anything because all the curtains were drawn. Classical music came from the small speakers at the corners of the hallway, giving the whole place a very strange feeling. Especially since the hallway was empty.

  Cirko turned to look at us, eyes wide and mouth open. “They’re gone,” he whispered.

  “Goddamn it!” This couldn’t be happening. We’d waited two days for nothing?

  "Do you feel anything?” Cirko asked, but I had no answer. If the vampires were here, they were too far away from me to feel. The hallway was much bigger than I expected.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Adrian said, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. Maybe she’d taken the guards in one of the rooms this time. Maybe they’d gone to grab something for her or whatever. All the curtains were drawn so we couldn’t actually see that Loretta wasn’t there.

  “I want to check the rooms,” I said in a whisper, and pushing them to the side, I stepped into the hallway. If they were hiding, I was going to feel it as soon as I was close enough to them.

  I moved as slowly and as silently as I could, and I pulled the curtain of the first room to the side, just a tiny bit. Inside, there was a round velvet bed with lots of pillows on it. The side walls were covered in mirrors, and bottles of alcohol were placed on two small tables on either side of the bed. Nobody was in there, so I dropped the curtain and moved to the next.

  I touched the thick fabric of the curtain just as a cube of ice slid down my back. It came so suddenly, there was no way I could have seen it coming. I pulled the curtain, and my friend Rene was in front of me. He punched me in the face so fast, I almost hit the floor. Something moved to my left, and I turned to see Adrian and Cirko being held by their necks by the other bodyguard, their feet dangling in the air a foot off the floor. Heart in my throat, I ran toward them, but I didn’t make it past the second step. Something grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back so hard, I hit the floor on my back. Rene’s face was suddenly in front of me, and I swung my arm to stab him, aiming for his temple, but he caught me by the wrist and pulled me up so easily, you’d think I weighed nothing at all.

  Half my focus on my fingers to not let my knives slip away, I swung my free arm without aim this time, and when his grip loosened around my wrist, I kneed him in the gut. He doubled over and repaid the favor in the process before I could stab him again, so I jumped back to give myself a better view of him. Through the corner of my eye I could see the other bodyguard dragging Adrian and Cirko toward the end of the hallway. I wanted to run after them so badly, but if I didn’t finish Rene off first, he’d catch me. He was fast, the fucker. He came at me with his fists raised, aiming for my face. I moved back until there was nowhere else to go. My back hit the wall, and the asshole grinned like he had me. He was too big—I wouldn’t make it if I tried to move to the side, so as much as it sucked, I let him hit me.

  His fist was made of fucking steel, or so the left side of my face thought. My jaw almost broke, and if it wasn’t for the wall behind me, I’d have fallen on my ass. The pain rang in my head, and I welcomed it. I gritted my teeth and braced for the second fist, and as soon as his skin touched mine, I pulled up both my hands with all my strength.

  Rene growled like a fucking animal and stepped back, holding his gut, his hands covered in blood. Getting to his heart had been impossible when he’d been so close to me, but now that he was wounded and kept both his hands down, I had a shot. Except I didn’t count on his eyes suddenly turning milky white. Yellow was scary, but white definitely took the cake. His fangs slipped out of his lips like it was the most natural thing in the world, and the monster that used to be Rene came for me with his mouth wide open. My hands moved on instinct, and a cry tore from my throat when his face was barely an inch from mine, those nasty fangs in clear view.

  But he stopped coming. The white of his eyes disappeared, like a fog suddenly lifting, and I pushed him away with my all my strength. That’s when I saw where I'd stabbed him—right under the chin, and my knife was still in him.

  Rene was disoriented, his hands moving up to his neck, searching for what wasn’t letting him breathe. I only had a second to slip my remaining knife from my left hand to my right, and I stabbed him right in the heart. Adrenaline rushed through my blood as I looked into his wide, terrified eyes, before his skin darkened and turned into ashes in less than two seconds. My bone knives fell in a pile by my feet, coated with ash and blood.

  There was no time to feel relief—this was not over yet. I grabbed my knives off the floor and ran toward the end of the hallway, to the last room in line. The curtain was on the floor as if someone had torn it off.

  “Ah, finally. I was getting a little bored,” an icy voice said, making my skin crawl. Loretta sat on the velvet bed, legs crossed, her eyes shining yellow, blood covering her mouth and chin. Behind her on the bed lay the man and woman who’d been with her, so pale they looked like corpses. The blood on their necks was a clear sign of what had happened, but somehow, their eyes were still open. To the side was the other bodyguard, his hands on Adrian’s and Cirko’s heads while they kneeled on the floor, facing Loretta.

  “Let them go,” I said, surprised at how strong I sounded when I felt almost helpless. Not because of me, but because of Adrian and Cirko. If they moved a single inch, the bodyguard could slam them to the ground before they could blink. And that was if Loretta didn’t finish them first.

  She smiled, and her fangs greeted me like old friends. Hers were smaller than Rene’s. Sharper. I almost put my hands over my neck on instinct.

  “Did you really think I couldn’t tell what you were?” she asked. She didn’t sound concerned at all, even though she could see my knives. She could see that they were covered in blood and black ash. She didn’t care that one of her bodyguards was already dead. “I could smell those toothpicks on you the second I saw you. So entertaining!” She clapped her hands and laughed. “It’s been so long since your kind came after me. I truly missed this.” She was out of her fucking mind.

  I took a step forward even though my whole being wanted to turn away and run as fast and as far away from her as possible. Yes,
I’d killed demons before, but they’d been just that: demons. But she…she was a monster. A real monster. I could see it in her eyes: her blood thirst, her desire to kill. My dad used to tell me if I faced a demon and thought they were going to kill me, then they were.

  “It’s as simple as that, Willow. What you think is what you are,” he’d said. If I thought I was going to die, then I was. But in those seconds, it was impossible not to imagine those fangs of hers sinking in my neck.

  “H-h-help…” the woman lying on the bed whispered. She was trying so hard to move her head, but she couldn’t. She and the man were barely breathing.

  Loretta laughed like it was the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard. It didn’t matter if I thought I was going to die or not. She needed to be stopped, and I was the only one standing.

  A split second before I charged her, a gun fired, making us all jump—even Loretta. The bodyguard took a step back, and Adrian was on the floor on his back. I automatically assumed the worst until I saw the gun in his hand. He fired another four shots before the bodyguard thought to move out of the way, but by that time, Cirko was going after him with my bone knife in his hand.

  It was now or never. Leaning down, I grabbed the thick red curtain and shot forward. I threw it on Loretta’s head, to both distract and confuse her, but she didn’t even stand up. I pulled my arms to the sides and aimed for her head with all my strength, but before the tips of the knives touched her, she slammed both her hands in my gut. The pain didn’t register while I flew a couple feet on air and landed on my back in the hallway. My ribs felt broken, and I couldn’t move for a long second, long enough for that vampire bitch to come close to me and put her stiletto on my neck. The tip of her heel grazed my skin right above my collarbone. If she put just a little bit of weight on it, I was a goner.