California Demon

by Debra Dunbar

  “Bring it in,” the taller Fixer, the one whose nose I’d bloodied, instructed the other two.

  “Like hell.” The swarthy one with a goatee took a step backward. “I’m not getting anywhere near that thing.”

  I realized they were talking about the groundhog. The Fixers must really be stretching it if they were recruiting guys like these—Cadillac-driving Scientologists who were afraid of a groundhog. The thing in the cage growled again, a long line of viscous drool extending from one of its fangs. Okay, I could excuse their groundhog fear. Plus, I’d read about what people had to go through getting rabies shots, and it sounded pretty horrible.

  “We can’t leave it in the trunk, you idiot. If it dies, we don’t get a dime, and it’s worth almost as much as the girl.”

  Really? My worth equaled that of a rabid groundhog? Damn, that hurt.

  “Fuck you, Raymond.” Goatee reached into the trunk and did the back-and-forth thing with his hand a few times until he worked up the nerve to grab the cage handle and haul it out. The whole time the groundhog stared at him with beady red eyes, foam decorating its upper lip. The growls were now punctuated with high-pitched shrieks that reminded me of YouTube videos I’d seen of wildcats.

  Raymond and the other guy dragged me into a one-room cinder block building and propped me up on a chair. The door and windows were missing and looked as if they’d been gone for years. There were stains on the floor that I suspected were old blood rather than motor oil. I’d gotten a good look around as they’d hauled me inside and seen nothing. Dusty tan dirt and gravel road. Unmown wild grasses. A clump of trees off in the distance with a mountain range shadowed in a smoggy, dusty fog farther away.

  An old filling station or one-room shop in the middle of nowhere. Great. If I managed to get away and run for it, I’d make a nice clear target with nothing to shield me besides a few miles of grass and dirt.

  Goatee put the cage with the rabid groundhog down in the back corner of the building. None of them were carrying my stuff in a bag or in their hands. For a second I thought maybe they’d left my gun, knives, and other gear in the car, but then I saw a familiar pistol butt sticking out of Raymond’s waistband.

  I liked that gun. It was my absolute favorite, and I wasn’t about to leave here without it.

  “Where’s the cash?” Raymond asked.

  Before I could answer, Goatee slapped me across the face. An open-handed blow can hurt almost as much as a fist if done right, and this guy knew what he was doing. Thankfully, he let me recover a bit, so I could attempt to reply.

  “A cop set me up. I don’t have either the cash or the cases of bullets.” With any luck they’d give up and just turn me in for the bounty that was out on my person.

  “A cop set me up,” the third guy mimicked with a high-pitched voice. “It was someone else. It wasn’t me.”

  He stepped forward, elbowing Goatee out of the way so he could get eye level with me. That meant I got a good whiff of him—cigar smoke and onions. Lovely.

  With a quick flick of his wrist, Cigars had a knife in his hand. “Where’s the money?”

  Damn it. It wasn’t just any old knife, it was one of mine. Cigars put the knife right at the edge of my neckline and dragged the tip in a vertical line, drawing blood. Trying to ignore the sharp sting of the wound, I sent a little trickle of electricity into my wrists and ankles.

  “I don’t have the money.” I spat in the guy’s face to back him up hoping he wouldn’t catch the not-so faint odor of burning plastic.

  Cigars didn’t budge and backhanded me even harder. I nearly fell off the chair, and lost enough control that the electricity surged.

  “What the fuck’s that smell?” Cigar asked.

  I might have been able to play it off, but my pants chose that moment to catch on fire. I yelped. Cigar and Goatee yelped. Raymond cursed and yanked off his T-shirt, flailing it at my jeans in an attempt to put out the fire.

  Both sets of plastic ties snapped, but my mind had detoured from escape to not-burning-alive. I screamed and tried to kick the flames off the hem of my pants. Electricity had no effect on me, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t flameproof.

  The fire lasted about two seconds—long enough for me to realize I needed to get my head back in the game or I was going to lose my very slight advantage. I dropped down low in the chair and kicked high into Raymond’s face just as the three of them realized what had happened.

  “She’s loose!” Cigar shouted, reaching for his gun—my gun.

  I’ll be damned if I was going to be shot with my own gun, so I jumped to my feet, grabbed Raymond and spun him in front of me to use as a human shield.

  That maneuver doesn’t work so well when the shield isn’t being kept compliant by a weapon. Raymond slammed his head backward into my face, then tried to flip me over his shoulder and to the ground. The guy clearly hadn’t taken enough martial arts classes when he was a kid, because all he managed to do was whack my nose and make the pair of us stagger to the side.

  Pain bloomed through my nose, nearly knocking me flat. It was all I could do to hang onto Raymond and try to blink the tears out of my eyes. I heard a gunshot and felt the spray of concrete chips against my shoulder. Fuck this shit. If I didn’t get control of the situation right now, I was going to be back in that chair, and I was pretty sure this time Goatee and Cigar weren’t going to be just slapping me for answers.

  That bounty probably just said alive. It didn’t say I had to arrive with my bones in one piece and all my blood on the inside of my body.

  I sent a small current of electricity through Raymond and accidentally killed him. Clearly my phaser was never set on stun when I was in stressful situations because that was so not supposed to happen. I tried to hold him up and pretend he was just napping, but the guy was over two hundred pounds, so I sagged to my knees under his weight.

  “She’s got magic!” Goatee shrieked, reaching for the gun with the white muzzle.

  I gave up trying to hold Raymond upright and grabbed the pistol out of his waistband just as Goatee fired. He hit me on my left breast. My left arm went numb and I gasped for air as the bullet punched against my chest. As soon as it hit, the bullet broke apart and spread a blue splotch across my shirt.

  Paint balls. That’s what the manufacturer used to carry the spell that temporarily negated magical ability. It worked against shifters, demons, angels, and it worked against me.

  Goatee shot again, this bullet missing me and painting a blue splotch on the cinder block wall behind me. I returned fire, but my aim went wide with the unfamiliar weapon. Raymond was sprawled onto the floor and not much use as a shield, so I dove for Goatee, taking two more paint ball bullets to the chest and accidentally kicking the cage with the rabid groundhog on my way.

  Now I had a shield. “Drop the weapon, or I’ll kill him.” I might not be familiar with Raymond’s gun, but I was confident I could put a bullet through Goatee’s head with the muzzle pressed against his skull.

  “Think I fucking care? Less people to share the bounty with.”

  I pushed Goatee away a split second before his head exploded out the back. Cigar pivoted, lowered his aim, and squeezed another round off, this one taking out my right knee. I dropped to the ground, unloading my magazine at him and thinking that Cigar was a much better shot than I’d given him credit for.

  I’d been shooting wild, a Hail Mary of bullets as I fell. I hit the wall a few times, and something metal. A few sounded as though they went into flesh. Not Cigar evidently because as I crashed on the concrete floor I saw him running toward me.

  It was the last thing I saw before the butt of his gun hit my temple.

  Chapter 18

  I woke up achy on a hard concrete surface. I blinked a few times, holding very still, trying to think and plan what I should do before Cigar realized I was awake. There was a pair of legs in front of me and I focused on them as I catalogued my injuries.

  My head throbbed and my nose hurt. Everything else felt�
��okay? How the fuck could my leg feel okay when that asshole had shot me right in the damned knee?

  I’d figure that out later. Right now, I was just going to be grateful for small miracles and hope that the leg would hold me when I sprang to my feet and tried to choke the life out of Cigar before he emptied a shit ton of bullets into my stomach.

  The legs bent and a face appeared in my line of vision. It wasn’t Cigar’s face and this man didn’t smell like tobacco and onions. He smelled like sandalwood and the mist off the ocean, and he looked like a surfer god.

  Bishop. I blinked at him, then looked around at the concrete block one-room building minus door and windows, at the chair, at three bodies sprawled across the ground in a sea of blood, at a rabid groundhog snarling in a wire cage.

  “Figures I’d find you here, Trouble.” He rocked back on his heels and looked around. “What the hell happened?”

  I eased into a sitting position, bending my left knee and amazed that was even possible. Then I gingerly felt the side of my head. Dried blood. A minor lump. No cracked skull or brains leaking out, so I guessed I was okay. My wrists had soot from the burned chair and restraints, and the bottom two inches of my pants were charred and burned off in a jagged hem. Maybe I’d set a new fashion trend. Acid washed was so yesterday. Burned hems were totally this year.

  How the hell was I okay? I should have a broken nose, black eyes, and a massive concussion. I should have a knee torn to shreds by a bullet. My head and nose weren’t nearly as perplexing as my knee. The pants showed a bullet hole and were covered in blood, but my knee didn’t have a scratch on it. Nothing. I’d felt the shot hit my knee. I’d gone down, unable to support myself. Why was my knee okay?

  Had my magic suddenly become more than minor telekinesis and human stun gun? I’d been shot in the fucking knee. Gunshot wound. Broken kneecap, destroyed ligaments. Muscle, bone, and nerve damage. And here I was fit to jog a 5k.

  What. The. Fuck.

  Fighting for your life tends to pull your mind away from injuries, but I’d been in enough fights that I knew when I was seriously hurt and when I was not. I knew that bullet had ripped through my leg. I knew how bad it was as I’d fallen to the ground.

  But… How could I have magic healing when I’d been shot multiple times with the white muzzle anti-magic gun? Was the weird healing thing not-magical or not affected by the hits? Had the anti-magic spell worn off, and I’d magically healed my knee as I lay unconscious on the floor?

  Whatever. I’d think about this shit later—after I found Nevarra.

  I struggled to my feet, Bishop not even giving me a hand, and looked around. Raymond was no longer smoking, but lay dead by the back wall. Goatee was sprawled across the floor in a giant pool of blood, a big-ass bullet hole coming out the back of his head. He was still leaking brains. How long had I been out? It couldn’t have been that long if the blood was still fresh. But…I looked down at the paint splotches on my shirt, then shook my head. Later. I’d figure out what the hell I had going on inside my weirdo body later.

  I kept looking around the small room. When my gaze landed on Cigar, I gave an involuntary start. He’d been mauled—like seriously mauled. What the fuck had done that? The man Bob had chewed on in the warehouse last night hadn’t been this bad. I couldn’t believe a little groundhog, no matter how vicious, could do something like this. Besides, he was still in the damned cage.

  Had Bishop chewed this guy to bits? Ick. As much as I appreciated Cigar being dead, I hoped Bishop stuck to his head-twisting method of killing in the future.

  “What happened?” Bishop repeated, looking at me as if he’d thought my brains had been leaking out of my head.

  I cleared my throat. “They jumped me in the parking lot of the Scientology church, hog tied me, and brought me here to interrogate.” Once more I rubbed the bump on my head. “Shit went south.”

  Bishop grunted. “I’d say. Why are the Scientologists after you?”

  I laughed. The idea of Scientologists gunning for me was so damned funny that I had a hard time stopping. Finally, I got a hold of myself and wiped my eyes.

  “Scientology has nothing to do with this. They’re Fixers. They grabbed me for the bounty. They were trying to get me to give them the bullets or the cash before they turned me over to the tax collectors.”

  “Fixers.” Bishop’s lips twisted up into a sneer. “They’re a bunch of idiots. Stupidest guns for hire in the entire city. Not that it’s any of my business, but how’d you get on the bad side of tax collection?”

  I suddenly realized that I’d never told him about the events that started this whole mess. Smoothing my blood-crusted hair back from my face, I decided there would be no harm in letting him know what was going on. I might not know what Bishop was, and he might scare the shit out of me, but I was absolutely confident he wouldn’t turn me over to the tax collectors.

  “A couple of days ago someone reported me for a really huge salvage that I didn’t take, so the tax guys paid the Fixers to collect. They showed up at Bear State Pawnbrokers and roughed the owner up, then went to my home and beat up my foster mother, shot my youngest sister, and kidnapped Nevarra. When I got home and saw what had happened, I went to you for help.”

  Bishop scowled. “I fucking hate tax collectors.”

  Me too.

  “Have you found your sister?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m still working some leads.”

  He nudged one of the cleaner of the dead guys with his foot. “You might have to take care of this tax problem sooner rather than later.”

  I didn’t have time to do that first, not when Nevarra might be sold and vanish forever.

  “What are you doing here?” I’d never met this guy before Thursday. It was kind of strange to just casually run into him two days after I’d hired him to try to track down Nevarra.

  He shrugged. “I get paid to find things. Someone’s Durft got stolen, and they asked me to track it down.”

  Where was Bob? Outside waiting? And what the fuck was a Durft? That rabid groundhog?

  “Someone hired you to find their…Durft?” I repeated, trying to make sense of things. Maybe that head wound was worse than I’d thought.

  “Yeah. It’s cheaper than buying a new one and spending months trying to get it to accept the new territory and bond to you. Not that Durfts ever really bond.”

  “Huh?” It wasn’t the most intelligent of comments, but I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about.

  He rolled his eyes. “Durfts. People buy them from the demons to use as guard animals. They bond better with humans than they do demons, evidently. They’re vicious. Demons fucking hate them.”

  A guard animal brought over from hell. More useful than a Doberman in this new fucked up world, apparently. I glanced over at the mauled Fixer and wondered how much it would cost to get one. Although I wouldn’t trust that rabid groundhog around my family, even with the appropriate bonding time and training.

  “I tracked Fluffy down, came in to find him munching down on one of your assailants, and put him back in the cage.” He shrugged like it had been no big deal to capture the Durft. Judging from the lack of wounds on his person, it probably had been no big deal to him.

  A smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. “Normally I would have left all this behind, taken the Durft back to his owners, collected my fee and gone home, but I saw you and was curious.”

  I looked around, retrieving my pistol and noting that the magazine was empty. Great. I’d need to head back home for more bullets, unless…

  Searching the room and the messy dead guys yielded me their two empty pistols, the anti-magic gun with five more specialized bullets, two spare loaded magazines that the Fixers hadn’t had time to use, my spare magazine, my switchblade, and a hunting knife with a tan camo sheath. I also scored two hundred dollars. I would have gotten two-fifty, but some of the bills had been chewed by the Durft to the point that I wouldn’t even be able to tape them together and try to e
xchange them somewhere. The other money was wet and bloody, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d washed bills in the bathroom sink and hung them up on the shower curtain line to dry.

  The whole time, Bishop remained and watched me. It was weird. I’d expected him to take off once his curiosity was sated, but he stayed—even with his payoff in a cage.

  I finished cataloging all my goodies, put them in my backpack which I’d found tossed in a corner, then slung the backpack over my shoulder. Bishop followed me out, carrying a strangely subdued Fluffy in the cage. I paused by his truck and watched him load the animal into the bed, noticing that Bob was nowhere to be found. Maybe Bishop had a super nose as well.

  “Where’s this lead of yours?” Bishop asked me.

  “West Hollywood.” I went over to the Caddy and peered through the window. The keys weren’t anywhere in sight. I hadn’t found them when I’d searched the dead guys, so they had to be here somewhere.

  “The Durft ate them.”

  I turned to see Bishop leaning against his truck, arms folded across his chest. It was a drool-worthy scene, which is why it took a few seconds to realize what he’d said.

  “The Durft ate what?” Oh hell, no. “The keys? The Durft ate the car keys?”

  “Yeah. And no, you can’t slice him open to get them. First, Fluffy would kill you before you managed to kill him. Secondly, I don’t get paid if I deliver him dead.”

  Damn it. I had no idea where I was. It could take me hours to walk back to town. There’d been no signs of another vehicle besides Bishop’s truck since I arrived.

  That left only one option.

  “Give me a lift?” I smiled at him, expecting that the answer would be no or to go fuck myself or something.

  He shrugged. “Sure, but I have to drop this guy off first in Bel Air.”

  It would still be faster than trying to walk to West Hollywood.

  “Thanks.” I walked around to the passenger side, climbed into the truck and waited for him to get in and start the vehicle up. “Bob’s not with you today?”