Demon Ensnared (Demon Enforcers Book 4)

by Jenn Stark

  “I don’t know. Dogs get loose, you think? Hurt someone?”

  “I can’t think—”

  Then the barking cut off, the shouting too. But Angela still ignored the new round of press questions. Her palms sweaty, she searched the crowd standing behind the velvet ropes, but she saw no faces she recognized, no obvious threats, only a sense of darkness rolling toward her like a deadly tide, grasping, clawing, and—

  The thud of pounding boots burst over them. “Security,” someone shouted. “Move.”

  Two large men in dark jackets leapt over the velvet ropes to her right and rushed past her, exactly as that rolling tide of fear coalesced into the form of three other men pushing toward Angela from the opposite side, scattering people in their wake. It was as if the three men appeared out of nowhere, and the scream building in her throat barely got started when the two groups collided. But now, where there had been two security guards and three assailants, there were a dozen, no, two dozen assailants rushing the ropes, lifting what appeared to be guns—but of course, they couldn’t be guns, because this was a gun-free zone, and—

  “Gun!” someone shouted.

  The first spray of bullets dropped the men to her right, and Angela’s scream finally escaped her throat as one of the security guards twisted back from the line of ropes and barreled into her, taking her to the ground. The man’s enormous body pressed against her—not intimately, not dangerously, but in such an act of total and absolute protection that it took her breath away…or maybe that was because he was crushing her lungs into her spine.

  Momentarily stunned, Angela stared up into the face of the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life. Dark curling hair cropped short, brilliant green eyes so bright, they had to be the result of colored contacts, a broad, chiseled face, and lips that could’ve been the model for only the most gorgeous of Greek statues. Because he was pinning her arms to the floor, she knew the man was wearing gloves, which struck her as odd, although she couldn’t at first figure out why. He didn’t look into her eyes, however, and no sooner had he flattened her than the man was up again, diving back into the chaos of the crowd.

  The instant he left her, Angela’s own security detail swarmed in, practically lifting her from the floor and rushing her through the crowd in the other direction.

  “Stop, wait!” she demanded, craning her neck to see what was going on. “Who are those people?”

  “Terrorists,” snapped Joe. “There’s going to be fucking hell to pay. Move it! Move it, people, let’s go!”

  He shoved Angela into a corridor, piling after her along with the rest of their squad—then all seven of them came to an abrupt halt.

  A dozen new men in Kevlar suits faced them, their rifles up and ready to fire.

  2

  “Careful, Hugh—” Gregori shouted. He turned and struck the beast closest to him so hard, the creature instantly dissolved into a spray of flying black goop.

  “Got ’im!” A trio of demons had flanked Hugh, coming fast from multiple directions, but at the last minute, the enforcer unleashed a sort of spinning kick that somehow managed to take all three of the horde out in one movement. Once again, the effect was immediate and messy. Geysers of black goop—what passed as blood for demons—sprayed what few members of the audience were still in this section. Most of the humans had fled, at least those nearest to the fight. But Gregori was keenly aware of the slavering intensity that still surrounded them on all sides, pressing forward, eager for bloodshed, for carnage…and that was only the humans.

  “Oof.”

  In his distraction, he’d missed his own approaching phalanx of attackers, and he staggered to the side as they rushed forward with claws and teeth, shedding their demonic glamour as they did so, at least to his eyes. But then, it was difficult for any demon to maintain its glamour long around Gregori. It was one of the “gifts with purchase” his empathic abilities afforded him. He could pierce any disguise, see through almost any mask—human, demon, or otherwise.

  Without warning, the image of the face of the woman he’d protected from an unusually focused onslaught of the demons flashed in front of his eyes. She’d clearly been the target of this attack, though he didn’t know why. He’d been more surprised that she’d reacted to him not with the terror she should have, or even the anger and violation a more sophisticated mortal typically expressed when barreled into by a stranger. No. She’d studied him curiously, as if he was a puzzle to be solved, an equation to be followed to its end, then examined over and over from every angle. She was beautiful in a detached, remote way, and he’d carefully avoided looking directly at her. He couldn’t afford to get lost in that inquisitive stare. Instead, he’d wrenched himself away to take out the demons clawing toward her, and the fight was on again.

  A fight he needed to be paying better attention to, given the flash of white-hot pain that scored his side.

  “Fire of God,” he growled, grabbing the offending demon as it raced by him, gleeful in the success of its rushing attack. But Gregori was too quick for it. He lashed out with a powerful hand and grabbed it tight around the neck. With a rough jerk, he broke the demon’s neck and used its body as a scourge, lashing it against another knot of the beasts. Something else he noticed: despite their intensity as attackers, these demons had curiously little durability. The moment Gregori connected with them, they shattered into gory pieces.

  Unfortunately, another wave of them appeared almost as quickly as the first one fell away, and these were carrying the strange guns he’d noticed before. Guns that were not made of metal but… Glass? Plastic? Was that possible?

  Yet for all their fierce appearance, these guns also only seemed useful for one round before shattering in the hands of the demons who wielded them, though of course the demons felt no pain. Guns couldn’t take out a demon, not even exploding ones. In nearly all cases, only a demon could take out another demon, and Gregori was more than happy to do the job.

  Opposite him, Hugh was making short work of his own mini horde attack, the enforcer’s speed almost faster than the human eye could track as he dispatched beast after beast. For a demon best known for talking his way through anything, Hugh was a competent fighter, employing his vaunted strategy skills to the far simpler task of neutralizing oncoming threats with brutal efficiency.

  Gregori, for his part, relied mostly on simply being brutal. He toppled another set of demons, punching them back beyond the veil as they exploded in a splatter of yet more goop. He slipped in the thick gore coating the concrete platform as another batch of demons leapt for him, his attackers wisely working as a group against him this time.

  It didn’t matter. When Gregori fought like this, deeply immersed in the glorious killing fugue that swept over him as he bent to the task that was now the sum total of his being, he could forget the clamoring world around him, the teeming mass of humanity in all its outrage and despair. He could focus solely on the ripping of skin, the exposing of sinew and bone, the disintegration of glamour and demon alike until all that was left was a steaming pool of goop. These demons were far more interesting than usual, because he hadn’t been wrong about their different scent. They smelled…controlled. Held in check against their will. Was that restraint tied to their unusual dedication to their mission? The Syx were known as particularly vicious fighters, and they always got the job done. Typically, once the dark beasts realized who they were up against, at least a third of any given demon horde the Syx fought fled into the night. But this crew remained almost single-mindedly focused on their task…

  …Their task.

  Oh no.

  The scream reached him almost at the same moment, a breathy, startled shout far more anguished than the bloodcurdling howl of horror he’d heard so many times when humans finally grasped the true evil they faced in the demon horde. Nonetheless, it gave Gregori everything he needed to find his target. It was the woman. Of course it was the woman. The woman he’d left to her own team of security professionals, all of them b
ristling with weapons. He’d thought she would be protected among so many of her own people. He’d thought…

  He grimaced with a new wave of shame. He knew exactly what he’d thought. That he couldn’t—shouldn’t—look at her, that he didn’t want to know the truth she held in her wide and searching eyes.

  Let this cup pass from me…

  With a renewed burst of humiliation, defensiveness, and growing rage, Gregori turned and raced back through the now-empty, cordoned-off section of the stadium and practically flew into a corridor that was vibrating with dark energy. As he did, he took care to disguise himself heavily, blocking any sense of his nature from the demons that lay within. His efforts were aided, of course, by the woman’s scream, wordlessly demanding his aid. While the archangel had sent Gregori and Hugh to this place, it was a human’s desperate need that gave him power.

  What he saw made his blood run cold. Thirteen demons in battle formation, holding the humans hostage. And it was a hostage situation, Gregori could tell immediately. Which meant there was something even worse in store for the humans who’d been trapped by the demons.

  He quickly assessed the situation. A pair of security guards lay dead on the ground, while three others writhed in agony, their minds potentially shattered beyond Gregori’s ability to repair, though…maybe…

  With a swiftness accorded solely to the members of his shadow company of demons, he moved through the broken humans, touching them briefly, praying over them with swift and careful words. He couldn’t heal the way he had once healed as a Fallen, but he did have some ability left. It wasn’t up to him if these humans lived or died, but he would do what he could.

  When he straightened again, he refocused on the remaining humans. The first, a security guard who was scared nearly to death himself, nevertheless remained steadfastly by his charge, using his body to block the same woman Gregori had dropped to the floor during the first wave of attacks. Then, she had surprised him with her stoic lack of emotion, but now she stunned him speechless. She was an empty slate. A cipher. The first human he’d ever encountered that he couldn’t instantly read. She didn’t seem catatonic, though. She was talking—talking in low, calm, and reasoned tones—and yet she was a complete emotional blank.

  At least on the surface. It was impossible to tell what emotions she was hiding beneath that careful mask.

  “It’s okay, Joe. It’s okay,” she said, her voice low and steady. “If you walk, I think they’ll let you go.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” Of the two, Joe sounded far more legitimately human to Gregori’s ears, and the emotions rolling off him—fear, anger, determination, horror—were appropriate. The woman, however…

  Don’t focus on the woman.

  Gregori felt the urgency of the warning that formed in his mind, and he knew both it and himself too well to ignore it. If he wanted to stay upright long enough to help these people, he couldn’t get sucked into the emotional morass of an individual human, especially a human who was so deeply blocked from feeling anything that, once her emotions were uncorked, they’d be damned near lethal in their intensity.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt too,” the woman continued evenly, still the soul of reason. “They seem fixated on me. Like they’re waiting.”

  “Yeah?” Joe spit out. “Waiting for what, Angie? What could possibly be worse than what these assholes did to Eric and Jim?”

  Something shifted across the woman’s face then, the briefest flashes of a deep horror that nearly took Gregori’s breath away.

  He bolted forward.

  “Joe,” he roared, and as if they’d already worked together dozens of times, the human security guard seemed to know instinctively what he needed to do. He turned and grabbed the woman—Angela Stanton was her name, Gregori realized in a rush, the male human as well as the horde repeating those words as if they were some kind of mantra—and shoved her to the floor, flopping his body on top of hers. At the same time, Gregori struck.

  Whenever possible during fights where humans were present, Gregori preferred to work with a tool of some sort, a weapon. Mortals seemed to understand a man’s ability to wield a weapon with great force, but they had a far more difficult time wrapping their heads around a man launching into a group of armed assailants using nothing but his fists. The guns these creatures were carrying were corrupted, however; some of them broken, some simply unable to fire, holdovers from the first wave of assailants. Demons could manifest themselves with any sort of glamour, but they couldn’t manifest actual weapons into being. They could only wield what humans left around for them to use. Most of the time, even that wasn’t necessary—not when teeth, claws, fists, and demonic fire were in play.

  But these demons seemed determined to keep up the illusion of mortals wielding guns. Gregori had no problem working with that. Unfortunately, he was too close to the actual humans to use spectral fire against the creatures, and he too had no desire to let his glamour slip. So fists it would have to be.

  Consumed once more with the glorious, healing rage of retribution, Gregori piled into the assembly before Joe and Angela fully collapsed to the concrete floor. There were twelve beasts to his one, but he had the advantage of surprise and the close quarters of the corridor to aid him. As the first group turned, he was already through them, exploding necks and shattering faces, breaking chests and loosing huge gouts of black goop. Demon blood showered the unfortunate Angela and Joe, but there was nothing Gregori could do about that—not and stay focused on the mission at hand.

  But the demons didn’t flee as he expected them to, not all of them. Roughly a third scattered, but then they came together again, only bigger—stronger. Gregori stumbled back, trying to get his bearings, and realized that these few demons were drawing from parts and pieces of their destroyed brethren. These were the same demons he’d sensed when they’d first arrived, the demons who were different. New. Profoundly wrong.

  These weren’t solely constructs of the Father, nor creations born of the pits of hell.

  What the hell were these things?

  “Gregori—what in the fuck?”

  Hugh appeared at the front of the corridor, and that momentary distraction was all Gregori required. He’d only ever needed about two-thirds of his strength to effectively combat the horde, but now he loosed the restraints on his wrath more completely, glorying in the madness that consumed him, clearing out his mind, lighting his blood on fire. He blasted bodily into the first composite demon, taking it against the wall so hard, the stone buckled. Screaming in agony, the creature burst instantly into flames as Gregori head-butted it. Getting an idea from that, Gregori whipped off his gloves and bolted for the second creature, launching through the air with his arms outstretched to miss the side-swiping kick of the third.

  “Hands!” he roared as Hugh joined the fight, but of course his fellow enforcer didn’t bother covering his hands for interactions with humans. He didn’t need to. Still, the move worked equally well for Hugh. The moment Gregori and Hugh connected physically with the new demons, they burst into flames. There was no black goop residue here, not anymore. In fact, the flames of these mightier demons set the demon blood coating the floor on fire, almost as if the black goop were fuel, and those flames raced along that fuel like an avenging wraith until they exploded into the corridor. Behind them, Angela and Joe screamed, and Gregori remembered that they too were covered in spatter. He turned to see them batting out the flames, but Hugh shoved him toward the final demon, who struggled for the opening of the corridor, trying to escape. Gregori lurched after it.

  The demon raced down the concrete steps, flames spurting out in all directions, catching the VIP cordoned-off area on fire. Then it leapt and soared over the seats with an ear-splitting yowl. It landed in the center of the dirt-filled stadium as Gregori caught up to it. Gregori vaguely heard the roaring of trucks and the wailing of humans as the demon turned and spread its arms wide—

  And was catapulted off his feet by an enormous truck. The d
emon’s body flew directly at Gregori, who wrapped it in his arms and exploded it into black ash and smoke.

  For a long, harrowing moment, there was nothing but silence.

  Then all the screams started up again.

  Gregori turned, blind with pain, but there was nowhere to escape, no path or exit immediately obvious to him. Worse, people were running toward him—running and shouting, bellowing even, their paroxysm of relief and joy no less agonizing for all that it was positive. Gregori couldn’t get out—couldn’t flee—

  “Brother!” Hugh called, and Gregori felt the smaller demon’s body next to his. Hugh threw his arm over Gregori and yanked him toward a doorway filled with shadows—

  Then the archangel was there, his hand held high. Hugh of the Syx passed through Michael’s misty form as if it was no barrier at all.

  Gregori didn’t.

  3

  “Go, go!” Angela railed, shoving Joe ahead of her so he’d stop trying to help her limp along and focus on the matter at hand. She didn’t know why she needed to reach the fallen security guard so quickly, but she knew she had to, somehow knew his mind would shatter into pieces if she didn’t.

  It was a feeling she understood all too well, and she wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.

  But a small crowd had already formed around the man, who was growling at everyone like a cornered bear by the time Joe breached the outer group, Angela right behind him. She was pretty sure she’d sprained her ankle something fierce during the gunmen’s attack, but she’d feel that pain later—much later, she suspected. Right now, the adrenaline she was riding was more than sufficient to keep her upright and moving.

  “Get away,” Joe shouted with impressive authority as he bounded up to the colossal security guard, who’d rolled over on his side, a mountain of a man who protected his face with blistered hands while he continued to warn people to get back, to get away, not to touch him. Though his words were earnest enough to carry real weight, it was the man’s hands that were keeping most people back, as several were shouting on their phones at 911 about a burn victim. The backs of the guard’s hands were bloody and raw, though she couldn’t exactly get a fix on them to see how badly he’d been hurt. It was clear he’d been burned, though. His clothing was scorched and blackened, his boots coated with ash. How he’d even survived…she had no idea.