“Okay, just do what you need to stay out of sight,” I agreed, as I heard the not-so-distant grumble of an automobile engine.
Galen turned and leapt into the underbrush like a horse in a steeplechase race. Lifting his hooves high, he made his way into the tree line and practically vanished. Before I could comment, my hair blew across my face, blinding me for a second. Shaw’s powerful wingbeats carried him aloft until he winked out, to be replaced by the erstwhile sparrow.
I checked my holster and made sure my gun was where I could get to it in a hurry. Then I let out a breath and marched back around the side of the house and towards the driveway. It took me a moment to realize that Liam was following me. Although he stayed off to one side and behind me by eight or nine yards, he remained right out in plain sight.
“Liam!” I hissed. “I can still see you!”
“That is no surprise, Dayna,” he replied calmly. “I lack the illusionary-spells that our centaur Wizard can bring to bear. But I have a different sort of invisibility.”
I scratched my head. “A different sort? What are you talking about?”
In answer, he simply lowered his head and began cropping the grass.
Of course. If anyone noticed the fayleene, all they’d see was a typical white-tailed deer. They were such a common sight in the rural California suburbs that hardly anyone gave them a second glance.
There was another benefit of Liam’s subterfuge. It kept the fayleene much closer to me than either the Wizard or the griffin. He’d be able to listen in on any conversation with his keen hearing. And he could be at my side in two large cervine bounds at the most.
The white van appeared as it crested the hill. As Shaw had said, an LAPD ‘gilded tower’ sigil adorned the side. They came around to where the driveway ended at the circle as I suddenly realized something.
Crap. I hope they don’t ask me how I got up to the crime scene, because there’s no car parked here.
It was too late now. All I could do was hope they didn’t ask.
The van came to a stop only a few yards away. No one stepped out. I squinted and made out two people sitting in the front seats, but the glare prevented me from seeing anything more.
I waved casually, in case the driver and his passenger had somehow missed the person standing practically in front of the vehicle. Still nothing. This was starting to feel kind of weird.
Finally, both doors opened. A dark-haired man got out of the driver’s side, a blonde woman from the passenger’s side. The both wore standard LAPD uniforms, which I expected. And they both wore dark sunglasses, which was a little odd.
Maybe my nerves were getting to me. At least, that’s what I told myself.
“Hey there,” I said, again with a little wave. “Dayna Chrissie, from the OME. What’re you guys doing here? I wasn’t expecting backup.”
I didn’t get a response. The officers just stood in place behind the open van doors and stared at me from behind their dark glasses. The woman was closer to me, but nothing about her registered in my memory. I squinted a second time at the man, and something did stick in my mind about him, at least.
“Don’t I know you?” I asked him. “Aren’t you in Homicide, under Detective Esteban? Or Detective Vega?”
A scuffing sound came from the back of the van. There was a creak as the rear doors opened. Two more uniformed policemen stepped out, also wearing dark sunglasses.
Okay, this was officially starting to creep me out.
The four members of the LAPD hadn’t done anything aggressive towards me yet, but this wasn’t anything like the way they normally acted. Luckily, I had one more card to play. My brain had obliged me for once and dredged up the name of the cop I thought I recognized.
“You’re Officer Clarke, aren’t you?” I asked, speaking directly to the man who’d gotten out on the driver’s side. “I don’t think we’ve spoken directly.”
And we still haven’t, I thought grimly.
I’d seen Clarke working at some of Esteban’s crime scenes. Most recently, he and another officer named Jackson had pulled their guns on me during the shooting of Police Chief Sims. They’d just pulled up and weren’t sure who the bad guys were yet. I was probably lucky that they hadn’t put a bullet in me.
I wasn’t so sure about this time.
“Um…hello?” I said, into the silence. “Is there something wrong?”
Clarke turned to his companion and spoke. My stomach curled up into a knot as I heard the words. Especially because I recognized the language, if not the words.
“Nawr hrad, drakal!”
The words were hard, sibilant. And they were words that no officer on the LAPD would have ever used.
They were spoken in Komang, the ancient demon-tongue used by the Ultari.
The blonde woman nodded. She stepped around the passenger side door and pulled her gun. A bolt of fear and adrenaline shot through my system like an electric shock. I went for my own weapon, realizing that there was no way to outdraw her. I’d learned from talking to experienced officers that drawing on a drawn gun was suicide.
With the syrupy slowness of a dream, the black barrel of her weapon came up. My thigh muscles shifted to the side as I tried to dive to the right. But there was no time.
A throaty bang! as she pulled the trigger.
That was it. I was done.
The range was far too close for anyone not legally blind to miss.
Something hot burned past my ear, ruffling my hair as it went by.
The smell of molten iron filled my nose. Somehow, my hand closed around my gun and I pulled it free as I continued my half-dive, half-fall to the right. But the slow motion, life-flashing-before-my eyes moment vanished as quickly as it had come.
Air whistled out of my lungs as I hit the ground, shoulder-first. The impact ran up the length of my arm as I pulled the trigger. My shot whined off harmlessly into the air. I clawed for breath as I tried to at least get into a defensive crouch.
I didn’t have time.
The blonde woman swung her gun around to cover me. Clarke came around the driver’s side door, drawing his gun as well. The two remaining officers followed suit.
Then a young man’s voice cried out a pair of Gaelic-sounding words.
“Caisig sguir!”
A sizzle like bacon dropped in a hot tub of grease. Behind me, a flash of white-hot light eclipsed the gentle daylight like a flare at night. The four LAPD officers screamed and tried to shield their eyes. The blonde woman staggered and blindly brought her gun up again, though the muzzle wavered back and forth as if she were drunk.
Then Liam leapt by, swiping at her hand with a sideways movement of his head. There was a crack as his antlers pinned the woman’s wrist against the door. The gun dropped as she let out a cry. He swung his head up and back, knocking her down with his second blow.
Galen’s voice rang in my ears as his hoofbeats heralded his approach.
“Tala, seydir!” he shouted. A small sphere of blue energy sailed past me, shattering the still-open passenger door’s window and blasting one of the men who’d come out of the rear doors of the van. He flew backwards and landed on the pavement, stunned.
A lion’s roar erupted from the sparrow that dove towards the driver’s side of the van. Clarke and the one other cop that remained on his feet panicked at the sound and froze in place. Shaw winked back into existence as he landed and lunged forward, forepaws extended.
He grabbed each man and slammed them against the side of the van with a bang. Razor-sharp talons pinned against neck and chest held the two fast. I was finally able to get to my feet and scrambled up next to Shaw, shouting at the top of my lungs as I did so.
“Don’t kill them!” I cried. “Just hold them!”
I pulled Clarke’s gun from where it hung loosely in his limp hand. Galen did the same with the last man as he galloped up on the other side. I made my way around the back, kneeling to check the patrolman that Galen had taken out with his magic. It looked like the
guy was going to wake up to a pair of shiners, but at least his pulse was steady as a rock.
“Are you okay?” I called over to Liam, as I collected the fallen man’s gun.
“Yes, and my opponent has also been knocked out,” the fayleene said, as he kicked the woman’s gun out of reach. “Her wrist is bent the wrong way, but her life force remains strong.”
“The foes in my grasp are coming about,” Shaw warned.
“Galen, can you take care of that?” I asked.
The wizard nodded, raised his hand, and spoke one of his Latinate phrases. The two men went limp. He then performed the same spell on the last two cops. I picked up the remaining loose firearms and placed them in one of the wizard’s saddlebags for safekeeping. As I did so, Shaw unceremoniously tossed our unconscious captives over to a nearby spot of lawn.
“How long are they going to stay knocked out?” I asked Galen. “I really don’t want to cuff them unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“For as long as I deem it,” the Wizard replied. “I did not ‘knock them out’, as you put it. Rather, they are under a form of my stasis magic and shall not wake up until I lift it, or neglect to maintain the spell.”
I considered that. Evidently, Galen’s ‘stasis magic’ as he called it, had many more uses than I first suspected. At least it was extremely helpful for the moment.
“Let’s leave them be for now,” I decided, as I tried to rub my bruised right shoulder. I got a sudden flash of pain from my left hand for my efforts. “Ouch.”
The skin on the back of that hand had turned red, as if I’d gotten a sudden sunburn. In fact, each of our four stasis-captives had similar markings across their faces, except for where their sunglasses had protected their skin. If anything, they looked like a foursome that had just spent time on the ski slopes without enough sunblock.
“That is my doing,” Liam admitted. “When I saw them pull their weapons, I had to stun all four as thoroughly as possible. My spell might have given them flash burns in the process.”
“‘Tis better than they deserve!” Shaw harrumphed, as his tail angrily lashed the air. “Had Dayna not wished to keep them alive for questioning, ‘twould have been four richly deserved deaths!”
Galen trotted up next to me as he pulled a small glass jar from a jacket pocket and handed it to me. I recognized it as the same anti-burn salve we’d used during our first fight with Korr of the Seraphine. The familiar pepper-jelly scent filled my nose as I popped it open and smeared a dollop on my hand, cooling it instantly. It was lucky that I hadn’t cropped my hair short, or worn it up like Vega, or the back of my neck would’ve been burned as well.
The crackle of the van’s radio cut me off. I kept quiet so we could all hear. All four of us turned to listen to the hissing, sibilant words that came over the broadcast channel.
“Ka’eth sy'n dygwyth! Ateb fi, ateb fi!”
“Ultari!” Galen whispered in amazement.
But I was beyond amazement. In fact, I was stuck somewhere between shocked and terrified. The words were only half of it. My friends didn’t know, couldn’t have known. But I did. Even through the snakelike language of the demons, I recognized the speaker.
“I know that voice,” I gasped. “That’s Damon Harrison.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Harrison’s voice repeated its call twice more, and then the radio went silent.
“Damon Harrison?” Liam asked in astonishment. “The human that you believe murdered one of your vassals?”
“He wasn’t my vassal,” I said, as I absently wiped my forehead. I came away with the damp feel of cold sweat. “As for Harrison, I thought he was human. Or is he? What is going on?”
I went over to where the four LAPD officers lay inert on the lawn. I knelt next to one and pried open his eyelids. What I saw made my heart skip a beat.
A creamy white film had blanked out the pupil and iris.
I checked the others and observed the same phenomenon. My friends watched without comment as I did so. Galen looked the most alarmed at my findings.
“Based on our observations,” he intoned, “I had thought that the Shapeless Ones would find it difficult to ‘host’ a human.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But only if they actively resist. Humans from my world who haven’t encountered the demons might be easier targets.”
“Thy question is but small game,” Shaw grunted. “The bigger question is how the Ultari got to thy world.”
I sat back on my heels. “That is a damned good question, Grimshaw. Demons are ethereals, like the pooka. It’s possible that they could travel between worlds.”
“King Magnus knows a good deal more about these demons.” Galen said. “We discussed this very subject, which is why the appearance of the Shapeless Ones here surprised me. According to him, demons lack the ability to cross worlds on their own. Someone else must have brought them across.”
“And they must have been brought very recently,” I added. “A fully-trained LAPD officer couldn’t have missed their shot at me, at least not at point-blank range. But what about one who’s just been hosted by an Ultari, a being who’s completely unfamiliar with the kickback of a firearm?”
“You make a good point. An Ultari would have access to their host’s memories, but not their full skill set.” Galen paused a moment before adding, “Perhaps Archer brought these demons here. Or Harrison.”
“Has Harrison shown any talent for magic?” Liam inquired, as he absently scraped one cloven hoof across the pavement.
I thought about it. “No. Well, yes. Maybe. I mean, I can’t think of anything for sure. But he did vanish awfully quickly one time. And he knows Komang. That tells me he’s from Andeluvia, or at least knows about your world.”
“He could also be hosted.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Not unless it was very recently. His eyes have looked normal in the past. And whether he was hosted or not, the question is, what was he and his four hosted officers up to?”
I absently rubbed the back of my hand, where Galen’s salve still tingled as it worked. Sighing, I walked to the back of the van. The rear doors were still wide open. My gasp as I looked inside the back of the van brought my friends at a run or trot, and they looked around me or over my shoulders.
The contents of the van were like nothing I’d ever seen the LAPD use.
A large wet-vac with an extended-reach nozzle sat in one corner. Ironically, it was just the type of equipment that I would have needed to clean up the liberally spilled liquid remains I’d found here the prior day. Next to it was something I only recognized from a long-ago physics class in college. It was a large electromagnet the size of a beer keg. The device had been strapped into a large hand truck.
That was something I understood, but I had no idea what several pieces of equipment could possibly be. One resembled the spilled-out guts of an old-time radio, complete with vacuum tubes and a series of nozzles. Another looked like a travel-sized washing machine fringed with loops of wire. The others got even stranger.
Galen pointed to a silver tool resembling the love child of an egg beater and a spork.
“I recognize this piece of equipment,” he said. “This is a tool used to detect and locate magically charged crystal.”
I frowned. “That must be of Andeluvian design.”
“Of that, I have no doubt. It is an Andeluvian tool, and one that only one versed in magic could build.”
I felt like throwing up my hands. “Then what is it doing in the back of an LAPD van?”
Galen shook his head. He had as little idea as I. Shaw spoke up again in his gruff warrior’s voice.
“‘Tis one thing for certain. We cannot allow thy enemies to keep these spoils.”
I nodded agreement. “Galen, can you destroy whatever we don’t take?”
“Quite easily, as a matter of fact.” The Wizard snatched up the wet-vac, magnet, and washing-machine-thing in his centaur-strong grip and set them down a few yards away. Then he
returned to grab the rest of the tools, including the eggbeater-spork thing. By the time Galen was done, his saddle bags fairly bulged.
“Is that all of it?” I asked.
“Every bit. Given how I could not find our mystery weapon’s bullet, it is good to see that we shall not be going home empty-handed.” The Wizard then motioned for us to step away from the heap of discarded equipment. He repeated his command of ‘tala, seydir!’ A small sphere of blue energy set the pile aglow with unearthly blue fire.
The radio in the van crackled to life again, startling me. This time, a completely human voice came over the speaker.
“Unit three-one-two, report in. Repeat, unit three-one-two, call in, over.”
The request grew more and more insistent with each repetition. Finally, I went over to the driver’s side and reached inside the cabin to turn the radio off. I wiped the knob clean before I returned to my friends.
“If the dispatcher doesn’t get an answer,” I informed them, “They’ll send someone else out to look for our four hosted officers.”
“How will they know where to look?” Galen asked. “This was obviously an unplanned excursion, at as far as the LAPD is aware.”
“There’s a tracker of sorts installed on each LAPD vehicle. Like the one the park service put on Liam.” The Protector of the Forest gave me a mortified look and flicked his tail at that. “But we have some time. It’ll be at least twenty minutes before anyone shows up here. And that’s assuming there’s a unit in the area that can respond in a hurry.”
Shaw nodded. “Aye, then thou hast time to decide the fate of these miscreants.”
I turned to the centaur. “What do you think, Galen?”
“I have the spellcraft to banish an Ultari from a hosted being, but I have since learned that fey magic is the most useful type to destroy demons.”
That surprised me. “Fey magic? The kind used by the fayleene?”
“The Wizard and I have spoken about this and worked out a way to put our two forms of magic into action,” Liam acknowledged. “But can we get any more information from these Creatures of Shadow before we destroy them?”
Trafficking in Demons Page 11