Emily chuckled. “You were all submissive earlier, now you’re back to your normal aggressive self.”
“I’ve always been like this. Nothing has changed.”
“Jesus, is it not obvious? Lexi is a succubus. Magic pussy, plus Reika, equals you being her bitch until the effect fades.”
My eyes rolled. Succubi couldn’t charm women with their magic, that was the job of an incubus. What I envisioned in that dream was created by my unconscious mind, a mind that wanted to experiment with her body when she displayed her female form at the ritual. Something I considered doing when I was her age.
I was not under her spell, I was her prisoner, she straight-up told me that.
I crossed my arms. “Whatever.”
“You can’t deny it, you both reek of sex and weren’t fully clothed when I barged in.”
I jammed my finger to the windshield before us. “Keep your fucking eyes on the road, Emily.” Meanwhile, I kept my eyes on Lexi’s face that grew pale in the aftermath of my outburst. “You know, Lexi… for someone that had no plans to help with Lucifer’s invasion.”
“I was Lucifer’s second-in-command when I arrived in my host’s body, it was my job to assist him, regardless of what my true desires were.”
“And now?”
“You already know the answer. I want him out of the picture, I want him stopped, I don’t want this invasion to happen. Hundreds are still in the hospital from the quake, hundreds that will become possession candidates once they receive the blood.”
“Assuming they haven’t gotten it already,” I said, tilting my head to the ceiling. “Damn, so his men are there to receive their backup from hell.”
“They’ll attack the city once the mass possession is complete,” Lexi added. “Those that don’t fall will have their souls forcibly contaminated, adding to his army.”
I began to think about all the folks that checked in the hospital to receive treatment for whatever they needed. The injured, the sick, the old, the young, they were all set to walk a similar path Lexi and I did, check in to get help, leave as a demon.
Jim was among those people. “Jim…” I mumbled to myself. “Fuck, we gotta get him out of there!”
Emily chimed in. “Jim? What about everyone else?”
“If they want a war, I’ll fucking give ‘em one, just leave my friend out of it.” I un-slouched my body as the red and blue flashing lights of police and ambulance raced past us. Lucifer’s plan hadn’t become known just yet and the city was already falling into chaos.
“We don’t have enough enchanted weapons to fight a demonic war,” Emily said.
“I got my talents.” I gestured to Lexi in the back seat. “So does she.”
“Not enough, when you slay a demon, its soul leaves the host and returns to its world, only to come back and take another body should it be a candidate. An enchanted weapon, however, will kill the soul of the demon.”
I began to think back to the shit show at the house of the demon hunter, Brianna. The possessed man I fought did switch bodies midway through the struggle when his blood splashed into an opened wound of another. Not just any blood; blood tainted with demonic blood. Even brief contact with demonic blood can contaminate a soul instantly.
War was unpredictable, violent and hella bloody. If we fail, then there will be a war fought here in the city, Lucifer’s army against humans, humans and possessed humans that will get injured, bled, and have open wounds for a period of time. One drop of demonic blood encountering a human will put them on the demonic possession candidate list, increasing the size of Lucifer’s army, decreasing the size of those that fight him.
Enchanted weapons would be the key to winning, otherwise the soul of the demon would just come back in another body, ready to fight again if its host’s body were to be killed.
I faced Emily and asked. “Where can we get more enchanted weapons?”
“I’d say the house of Brianna that I was planning to rob clean if it hadn’t been burned to the ground…” Yeah, my bad. “A skilled priest could make one, but the enchantment process has a sixty-six percent failure rate. And quite frankly—”
“We don’t have time for that,” I finished her sentence.
“Exactly, our only salvation lies in preventing the war.”
That meant returning to the place where my life changed forever.
I exhaled deeply, cracked my knuckles, and said. “Emily, we’re going to need your help—”
“No, no, don’t bring me into this,” Emily pleaded. “I’m a thief not a demon slayer.”
“Do you really think Lucifer will allow you to go about your business with him being in charge around the world?”
She paused as her eyebrow rose. “… Maybe? I am a fellow demon.”
“Get us to the hospital.”
Emily changed directions and sent her beast of a car bolting down the roads leading to the hospital. I had no idea exactly how we were going to go about doing this, the only thought on my mind was kicking in the door and charging in with guns blazing like a Hollywood blockbuster action flick.
That was assuming of course they didn’t contaminate everyone’s blood. If that was the case, then we’d be making ourselves the first casualties of the demonic invasion of New York as hordes of talent wielding demons with their new human hosts fuck us up in the hallways.
But hey, at least we’d be in the hospital, right? Yeah… I know.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
NYPD cars, SWAT trucks, police barricades cornered off the hospital from the rest of the city. Tiny flakes of snow tumbled down from the night sky as the three of us glanced at the blockade before us. There was no way in, and I was 90 percent sure the cops still wanted to pull me in for questioning. Waltzing past them wasn’t a good way to get the situation under control, it was an effective way to make Lucifer’s job easier.
I was ready to give up, and switch to plan B… find a priest that could mass produce as many enchanted weapons as possible in preparation for the violence and demons that was about to erupt out from the hospital. Then I saw a faint glimmer of hope, Gabe was among the police at the scene. He was alive and well after the battle at Schubert’s place. I thought about asking him what he was doing at Lexi’s place when she had recovered me, but only briefly. Plan A just got hit with the defibrillator, this was priority, not the mysterious talk the two had when I was on the verge of death.
I discretely rushed to him, keeping my head away from the rest of the cops and SWAT members. “Gabe!” I called out to him.
He looked up at me, and then shifted his eyes from side to side, confirming that none of his colleagues had seen or heard us approach. He moved away from the gathering of law enforcement personnel, leading us toward a less populated darkened corner.
“This better be good, we got hostages inside,” Gabe whispered to me as we met up.
“The hostage takers are people loyal to Lucifer,” I said as Gabe looked behind, double-checking that nobody else was around to hear us talk.
He quickly looked at me, with a flabbergasted look on his face. “Shit, are you sure about that?”
“We just escaped an ambush from his followers.” I jammed my thumb back toward Lexi who kept a low profile, to the outside world she was still a musical celebrity. “They attacked her place, both of them apparently.”
Gabe stroked his chin. “I heard something about that on the radio on my way here.”
“They’re getting ready to perform a mass possession using all the patients inside.”
Gabe’s face looked upward at the hospital and its multiple floors, while police and SWAT helicopters swung in shining their searchlights upon it. His face cringed some more. “Damn it, if Lucifer is there and protected by his followers.”
I looked at all the SWAT commandos as they armed themselves with their submachine guns, night-vision goggles, body armor and such. Lucifer’s men where just as armed and deadly, and those were the ones that weren’t possessed. I shook my head. �
��Those SWAT people aren’t going to last long if Lucifer strikes first. Pull them out.”
“I’m just a detective, it’s not my call,” Gabe said, facing the SWAT members passing around weapons. “And besides, what else can we do? We gotta end this now!”
I stepped closer to him, my left hand wrapped around his wrist. “Let us go in.”
“Oh man…” he said, snatching the top of his head… which, surprisingly, looked perfectly fine considering Schubert had sawn through it with a dagger. Then again, I got shot up that same day, and was perfectly fine, but I had a self-healing talent to help me. What the hell did he use to heal up so fast and return to duty? “Reika, it’s not that simple.”
“You know what I’m capable of, Gabe.” I looked at Lexi. “And she’s stronger than I—”
“I know her story.”
“Do you now?”
Gabe brandished his sidearm, a Smith & Wesson 5906. Along the barrel of the pistol were blue glowing glyphs… familiar ones, like the ones on enchanted weapons. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling he was the only cop in the city to have such a weapon.
My jaw dropped. “Well, fuck me.”
“I’m going to try and pull some strings to get you all in and delay the SWAT as much as I can,” Gabe said as he slowly returned to the police barricade. “So, whatever you plan to do get it done fast, once they enter they’re going to shoot anyone that doesn’t look like they belong there, and you three will fit that description, especially if you’re still fighting.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Emily said as her hands formed a complex mudra combination.
Her body vanished into a pile of clothes that fell to the ground. Out from the clothes crawled a cat, the same one I had took in believing it was some stray. She scurried off into the darkness, looking for another way in I suspected. Gabe didn’t flinch or ask any questions, it was as if shapeshifting cat girls were a regular thing.
Gabe returned to the cops and SWAT members, his lips moved drawing their attention, his fingers pointed about, probably weaving a bullshit story as to why they can’t enter just yet. My questions about him being at Lexi’s place were put aside indefinitely. It was obvious why the two had met. He knew what was up when it came to the demon world which was probably why he reached out to me when word of my encounters with Lucifer’s stalkers became common, though that whack ass ritual was a bit of a giveaway. Former demon hunter perhaps? Who the fuck knows.
We saw the SWAT team members back away as Gabe returned to us, whatever he did it worked. With his gun aimed to the ground, he led us inside and up the emergency staircase, no need to give away the fact we were coming up via the elevators.
According to Gabe, most of the hostages had been brought up to the top floor where the armed gunmen held them at gunpoint. Lucifer and whatever demons he had with him were probably somewhere within that mix, our main targets.
Take out the magic users, protect the hostages, the SWAT team can handle the rest from there. “So, Gabe what’s your story?” I asked as we passed the third floor.
“Eh?”
I pointed at his drawn pistol. “That’s an enchanted weapon.”
Gabe snickered, but said nothing more.
We arrived at the top floor and silently crept across the white tiles reflecting the ceiling light. The same type of armed gunmen that had attacked us previously were marauding in circles with their assault rifles as the frightened patients were forced to the floor along with doctors and nurses in their white coats.
Game plan was to get a lay of the land, see where the talent-wielding adversaries were and go from there.
Yeah, that plan didn’t work out very well.
I got too close to one of the gunmen, he began to call for help while his rifle rose up and took aim at me. The situation dipped into full chaos from there. I unsheathed my katana while my body tapped into its source of Umbral energy, igniting me and my weapon in a blaze of badass flames. My opponent’s rifle never did get a shot off, kind of hard to do that when the hand your trigger finger is connected to is removed by two swift slashes. His screams pierced my head while he stood looking at the burning stump where his hand was as his rifle dropped to the floor. The white tiles turned red after I finished him off.
Multiple bangs and pops became the only sounds I could hear at that point. The gunman engaged in combat with Gabe’s enchanted pistol. Lexi’s velvet goth dress rippled as if wind were blowing through it while tiny bolts of electric energy danced across her body. She commanded a gust of wind to fill the halls, blowing two gunmen backward onto the floor, Gabe’s bullets finished them off.
A second set of attackers appeared from the corner, Lexi snapped her fingers. A bright bolt of indoor lightning flashed, the gunmen that saw it with unprotected eyes began to stagger. They tried to fire their weapons, none of their bullets hit their targets, being us. Some stopped to rub their eyes others walked into walls or tripped over the bodies of their fallen partners. The lightning burst blinded them, along with the hostages as well… hopefully temporarily.
I charged forward with my burning katana cutting the gunmen in half with each stroke, sending their halved bodies to the floor, engulfed in flames that rapidly spread to them from my blade. I felt my inner beast laugh at the carnage, can't spell slaughter without laughter after all.
We began to secure the hostages, giving them a helping hand off the floor. The first few needed our help to stand up due to the blinding burst of light. The next group we aided didn’t need so much help as their vision slowly began to return to normal, much to the relief of everyone. I had to make a mental note of the potency of the blinding lightning talent, it’s good to throw the aim of your attacker out of whack, but your window of opportunity was limited.
One good thing came about from Lexi’s actions, none of the bad guys we saw used talents. I took advantage and forced the flames around me and my blade to reduce. Lexi did the same when I gestured to her. Jim was still in the dark about our skills, I was going to need him to trust me now more than ever going forward as I helped his bandaged and burned body up to his feet.
“Jim,” I said, smiling at him.
His eyes squinted once we made face-to-face contact. “Reika? That you?”
“Yeah, it is, how you holding up?”
“This is kind of a bad time to make a hospital visit, don’t you think?”
I looked at the hostages that were patients, some of them still had IV tubes attached to them. That’s when I was reminded of the critical situation. I held onto the top of Jim’s shoulders. “Jim, listen to me; did you receive any transfusions?”
His eyebrow rose, and his lips twisted. “No… Should I?”
Jim was still human, unless of course he was lying, I’ll take his word for it, he suffered burns after all which didn’t need a transfusion. Sure, they could have forced it on him, and I had no doubt they had planned to after their first wave of possessed demons arrived, but it looked as if they didn’t make it to that stage.
With the last hostages secured, I approached a terrified doctor. “Has anyone here undergone any blood transfusions recently?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, we just received a new batch today; there are quite a few people that needed it badly, so we’ve been out.”
Gabe joined our small talk, flashed his NYPD badge, and asked. “How many people have received transfusions since the quake?”
The doctor scratched his head. “A few, with the older limited stock we had.”
I watched as Gabe placed his hands over his lips and entered a state of deep thought. Deep thoughts he needed to share with the rest of us. “Is that a good thing?” I asked.
“If it’s the older stock, then yes,” he said. “This new batch, I’m willing to bet, is the stuff we don’t want inside of anyone.”
I returned to the doctor. “Take us to your stock of blood, this is important.”
With nervousness in his footsteps, the doctor complied and led us to the refrigeration un
it where they stored their blood supplies. My hand waved to Jim, beckoning him to follow behind. The doctor opened it up as we arrived, showing us the shitload of the newly received product that had been unknowingly sitting in a spare bedroom at Schubert’s place. Unknowingly supplied by the ever so kind demonic blood donors.
“Here it is, just arrived today,” said the doctor.
Gabe nodded and patted the doctor on his back. “Thanks—”
Automatic weapon fire soared past us. We missed a few of Lucifer’s gunmen, and they looked pretty pissed off that we were seconds away from spoiling their plans.
“Keep your head down!” Gabe said as he ran to cover the entrance to the room.
After a quick reload, Gabe’s pistol discharged clattering the floor with empty bullet casings. The doctor hurried away into a discreet corner, panicking and trembling. Meanwhile, Lexi, Jim, and I were useless as we couldn’t risk exposing ourselves using talents, and Jim? He wasn’t armed.
It was all up to Gabe to hold them off, possibly Emily, if she found away in, if she did now would have been a good time to give us some ninjutsu love. In the meantime, I rummaged through the blood packs within the fridge; there was a lot to say the least. Every second I spent looking at it filled my heart with rage, for it was demonic blood like this that was the reason I became what I was.
“Okay now what?” I yelled amongst the weapons exchange.
Gabe yelled back as he began to reload his pistol. “We get it out of here and have it destroyed!”
“Agreed,” Lexi chimed in. “But let’s not destroy it right away.”
Gabe faced her with a surprised look on his face. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“We could use it as leverage.” Lexi held up a blood pack, her eyes lit up. “None of us knew his faction was this large and heavily armed. There may be more of them in hiding; we could use this against them!”
Jim looked confused as he should be, while the doctor was too busy panicking to hear us talk. I leaned in closer to Lexi to whisper into her ear. “Does this have to do with a certain someone wanting to become a demon lord?”
Kiss of the Demon Girl Page 19