Demon's Vengeance

by Jocelynn Drake

  A little compassion and understanding and this all could be stopped.

  But Eddie didn’t care about that. He wanted to see Gideon staked in the middle of a field while his skin was stripped off with a potato peeler. This asshole didn’t give a shit about the fact that Gideon had saved countless lives through his secret protection of the ­people. They didn’t care that he had a wife and a daughter whom he loved deeply. Hell, they’d kill the man’s daughter in a heartbeat just to avoid the risk of her one day growing up to be a witch. Probably his wife too because she’d be viewed as a traitor.

  A sickening shaft of fear sliced through my heart and I clenched my teeth against it. It wasn’t his suggestion that I was afraid of. It was the idea that most ­people in the world probably thought just like him. At one time, I could have almost excused it. I’d watched from a front-­row seat as the Towers tortured and slaughtered the ­people of world. I understood their hatred and their fear.

  But they couldn’t see the good within the bad; the so-­called diamonds in the rough. If it was magical, it was bad and needed to die. And once they succeeded in tearing down the Towers and destroying all the witches and warlocks, what was next? The elves, because of their natural magical abilities? Or maybe the tattoo artists of the world because we knew how to mix potions?

  Was this the world I was trying desperately to save? I’d be trading one horror for another.

  I wanted to be sick, but couldn’t. Serah had just stepped out of the medical offices building and was heading toward the crosswalk.

  She moved slowly, sort of waddling from the front door of the medical offices building and down the sidewalk toward the corner. She was wrapped in a heavy coat with a knit hat pulled down low to cover her ears as well as the Bluetooth device that was there. The only thing that looked somewhat out of place was the fact that she wasn’t wearing any gloves. One of her bare hands rested on the large stomach protruding in front of her while her other hung loosely at her side. I was willing to bet that she had a gun in her pocket and gloves would have made it impossible for her to pull the trigger.

  While her shape was accurate, she didn’t quite act like a pregnant woman. There was a tension humming from her body as if she was expecting to be attacked at any second. Then again, it was likely that most women in Low Town were acting that way now that news had hit of a third murder. Staring out the front window of my shop today, I’d noticed that lone women in cars and walking down the sidewalk were few and far between. They were traveling in packs now and usually had a man close at hand.

  Low Town had always had a bit of an edge to it. Maybe not like Chicago or Los Angeles, but it had its dangers. Yet, this recent turn had gone to a sickening extreme.

  “What the fuck?” Eddie grumbled. “She supposed to be having twins?”

  For once, I had to agree with him. Serah did look particularly stuffed between the pregnancy suit she was in and the heavy winter clothing adding a second thick layer.

  “It’s like she got knocked up by the marshmallow man,” I murmured as she shuffled across the street when the light finally turned in her favor. Eddie’s wheezing laugh filled the silence as we waited.

  After a ­couple minutes, Serah was safely inside the hospital and we all breathed a sigh of relief. I could feel the tension rush out of Serah. Her hands were probably shaking. Inside, a nurse was showing her to a private room where she would wait for approximately thirty minutes before she would set out on her long walk down the block to the grocery store.

  Reaching over, I tapped Eddie’s forehead again, putting him into the trance. “Serah is safely inside the hospital. She’ll move again in thirty,” I said aloud for Bronx.

  Saw her. I’m good, Bronx replied in my head, more for my own peace of mind than anything.

  Telling myself that my companions were still safe, I tapped Eddie again, waking him up. We were as ready as we were going to be.

  There was a part of me hoping that the killer would strike tonight. I didn’t want to think about Serah being grabbed by this psycho bitch and me not reaching her in time. But if she struck tonight and we caught her, it was all over. The threat to the women of Low Town would be over and we could all return to our pseudo-­normal lives. If not, we’d have to do this over and over again until we did catch her. I wasn’t sure I could take another night of this, let alone a string of them.

  Eddie and I sat without talking, listening to the police radio as the stern voice detailed the movements of the other three women who were acting as bait. I was beginning to worry that this wasn’t going to work. What if the killer knew? What if she knew which women were being watched so that she was now off somewhere else killing? What if she decided to take a night off? She hadn’t killed every night since the tattoo, right? Even psychopaths needed a break.

  There was no snow tonight. A clear sky sparkled overhead with starlight, allowing the temperature to drop close to zero. Was it too cold for the killer to venture out from her nice warm home? I prayed that Bronx was wearing enough layers to tolerate the cold.

  Time slipped away from me as the night dragged on with only the sounds of other cops to keep me company. One group was moving to a new location to get a better view. Another was freezing his ass off on some roof across town and wanted coffee. Another stopped to check out some movement down a dark alley along Serah’s route. I held my breath, waiting to hear that Bronx had been discovered. It was only an ice pixie chasing a rat, the cop reported back moments later. The world was quiet.

  And then Serah was on the move again. Her fear spiked as soon as she stepped out of the bright embrace of the hospital into the night. From our spot across the street, I could see her flinch as the bitter cold slapped her in the face. Shoving one hand in her pocket while resting the other on her false stomach, she slowly started forward, heading north toward the grocery store.

  When she was a block from the hospital, the sidewalk became empty. It was nearly eight in the evening, but the freezing temperatures had driven everyone inside for warmth. Only members of the Winter Court and the random Yeti would have found the evening air inviting.

  By the second block, it looked as if someone had knocked out most of the street lamps. The darkness had grown thicker so that the navy blue coat Serah wore was nearly invisible. I wasn’t sure if the cops had prepared the street to be dark ahead of time or it was just our luck.

  Eddie grabbed up the transmitter from the dashboard. “Number Four preparing to move to Location Two,” he quickly said. Returning the microphone to its spot, he turned the key. The car shook and growled to life again. He waited.

  Serah stopped midstride as she was passing beside a dark, narrow alley. Her entire body was frozen as she turned her head toward the darkness.

  “She heard something,” I whispered, leaning forward on the edge of my seat so I could try to see a little better. But the combination of the darkness and the distance made it impossible. I could practically taste her fear in the back of my throat while her heart pounded over mine. There was now a low growl in my head from Bronx. The troll had noticed Serah pause, and we all waited.

  Eddie snatched up the radio and relayed that Serah had stopped for something. Everyone was on alert. One second stretched into an eternity, and then Serah gave a shake of her head, as if waving off the sound as nothing. She took one step down the sidewalk, resuming her long trek to the grocery, before she was yanked back into the yawning darkness.

  I gasped as her fear flooded my veins, blocking out everything else. For a second, I couldn’t think. There was only her terror and my own fear for her drowning out all rational thought. Sucking in a deep breath, I felt my heart start again as Eddie gunned the car out of our parking spot. He clipped the bumper of a parked car and cut off another as he raced down the two blocks. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a large, black mass charge out of the shadows toward Serah’s location.

  Serah’s terro
r quickly became replaced with anger and I found that I could breathe again. Centering all my powers on her location, I started to form a protection spell for her in my mind and then she was gone.

  Poof.

  Gone.

  As if she had never existed.

  I jumped out of the car before Eddie brought it to a screeching halt. He was shouting into his radio for backup as he followed me. Bronx was only a half step behind us. We stood gaping into the darkness, but there was no one there. Swearing softly to myself as my breath broke from my throat in hard gasps, I conjured up a ball of light and threw it into the alley to try to push back the darkness. In my desperation and haste, I’d forgotten about Eddie, the magic hater.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, followed by a loud clatter.

  Twisting around, I found that he’d dropped the radio on the concrete and was now holding his gun on me with both hands while backing himself against the wall. In the thin light I’d cast, I could see that his face was now ghostly white.

  “Y-­You’re one of them,” he said. “You’re one of them fucking warlocks!”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have time for you,” I said.

  Before he could squeeze the trigger of his gun, I sent a little pulse of energy into his brain. The man collapsed, falling to the ground like a wad of dirty laundry. I wasted another second wiping his memory of the past ten seconds so that the last thing he remembered was racing to this alley with me.

  With the cop taken care of, I turned my attention back to the alley and Serah’s disappearance. This wasn’t the work of the killer who had been stalking pregnant women the past several days. Could it be the asshole who was working the Death Magic? God, I hoped not.

  After a ­couple steps inward, I spotted the button I had given to Serah lying on the ground. If it hadn’t fallen partially on an old piece of paper, I would never have spotted it against the black asphalt. Whoever had taken her had been smart enough to remove the charmed object that was tracking her.

  “Who took her? The killer?”

  “No,” I whispered, my mind turning over my options.

  Bending to pick up the button, I froze as a whiff of magic drifted to me. Not the same as what I sensed with the Death Magic user. This was a different kind of magic, smelling of stagnant water and mold. It made me think of dark, damp places hidden from the sun. This was a different creature entirely. I wasn’t quite sure what had grabbed Serah, but I was starting to get a pretty good hunch. But that didn’t matter. The important thing was that the magic had left a trail I could follow.

  Taking one last look back at the bastard on the ground, I grabbed Bronx’s arm and we winked out of sight before the next cop appeared around the corner. We had a friend to save.

  Part 3

  Inner Demon

  Chapter 1

  They were waiting for us.

  Darkness blotted out everything when Bronx and I arrived at what I thought was Serah’s final destination. Before I could summon up a light spell, they were on us. Pain slashed across my arm as if someone had taken a knife to my flesh. A blunt object crashed into my side with an ugly cracking sound indicating that a ­couple of my ribs had broken. One of my assailants jumped on my back, wrapping his long, thin arms around my throat, cutting off my air supply.

  Over the screeching of my attackers and skittering of claws across pavement, Bronx released an eardrum-­shattering roar followed by the sickening thud of his fists pummeling soft flesh. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could start to make out the troll as he picked up his smaller adversaries and threw them across the room.

  Sucking in a slender thread of air as I tried to fight my way free, I tapped the energy in the air and sent it out in a raw, angry blast. Some small part of my brain prayed that Serah wasn’t in the direct path of the energy, but I was too oxygen starved to give it much thought. I just knew that Bronx would be able to survive it.

  Panicked screams filled the air as my enemies scampered away. Someone new shouted above the din and the screams immediately stopped. I didn’t recognize the language that was encased in the howl, but it didn’t sound friendly.

  A twisted spell glowed in the forefront of my mind. I didn’t know if I had glimpsed it in a book or if it was the conjuring of my own panic, but the feel of it was dark and violent. My stomach churned at the thought of letting this loose, and yet I still gathered together the energy. I wanted the death and destruction to stop. I wanted the violence to end. I might not have started this fight, but I was ready to fucking finish it.

  “Stop!” Serah shouted somewhere to my right. “Everyone stop! It’s a misunderstanding!”

  “Light!” I barked, throwing out my right arm. The only sound in the suddenly dense silence was the soft patter of my blood raining from my arm as I moved it.

  Several balls of white light jumped from my fingertips and elegantly floated upward until they reached a ceiling two stories above us. A quick glance around revealed that we were in an old theater and surrounded by goblins. Fuck. This wasn’t good at all.

  Serah was being held by the back of her thick coat by the tallest of the goblins, his orange eyes reflecting with a sickening menace as he glared at me. The TAPSS investigator didn’t look as if she had been harmed. Only her knit cap was a little askew.

  Bronx was leaning on one knee to my left. His heavy wool coat had been shredded by the goblins and there were several cuts on his body that were slowly bleeding. Looking over at me, he gave me a small nod to indicate that he was okay. Trolls could take a beating, but no one wanted to take on a horde of goblins. They weren’t strong or even particularly smart, but they had numbers on their side. Take out one, and three more were waiting to take his place.

  “It’s a misunderstanding,” Serah repeated, trying to keep her voice calm now that we were no longer trying to kill each other.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  Another goblin stepped forward, slighter in build with long, stringy black hair. I had a feeling that this one was a female, though there was still nothing attractive about her appearance. However, she quickly settled all doubts when she opened her mouth, revealing a hauntingly melodious voice. “You’re hunting the pregnant women of this city.”

  I had to give my head a little shake as if to clear it before I could bring myself to respond. Her voice was so strangely contrary to her appearance. It was like listening to a nightingale’s song leap from the snout of a warthog. “I’m not. I’m trying to protect them.”

  “Lies,” the goblin holding Serah shouted. “You attacked us! Set our home on fire!”

  “I didn’t! You attacked us first!” I yelled back. It was much easier to argue with this asshole. He sounded like he was aching for a fight and I was more than ready to give it to him.

  “You lied to enter our home,” the female pointed out.

  The next words died in my throat. There was something about the sound. I didn’t want to argue with her. It was almost a compulsion. This goblin could have given the sirens a lesson or two about control.

  “We tried the truth, but your ­people kept slamming the door in our face,” Serah explained while I fought to untangle my tongue. “We came to discuss the murders with you. We wanted to know if you had heard or seen anything.” She unzipped her coat and reached into an inner pocket to produce the little leather wallet that held her TAPSS badge. “We’re trying to catch the killer.”

  The female frowned at the badge. I couldn’t tell if she just wasn’t impressed with it or if she was more concerned about the fact that Serah represented an officer of the law. TAPSS might not have any kind of jurisdiction over the kinds of illegal activities that they were involved in, but goblins didn’t care for anyone within the law-­enforcement field.

  “And you are working with a warlock?” she inquired after a moment of silence.

  Serah sighed, shoving the badge back into her pocket. “It�
�s complicated.”

  No shit.

  “We’re just trying to track down the person who has been killing pregnant women.” Bronx broke in, once again sounding like the voice of reason. “Do you know anything? Have you seen her?”

  I wanted to smile at my old friend. His questions, at least briefly, distracted them from the guy performing magic who was clearly not a part of the Towers regime. I’d already been blackmailed by one bastard who knew my secret. I had no intention of going down that road again.

  At this point in our investigation, I’d take a good description of the woman. With all my spells and Gideon’s, we hadn’t even managed to get a good look at this bitch. Our big breakthrough was that the killer was a woman and likely human. Fantastic. That only narrowed it down to a few thousand occupants of Low Town.

  “We’ve not seen her that we know of,” the female said, lifting her angular chin a bit. “The killings have scared the women we have working for us. Two have left Low Town, threatening to break their contract with us.”

  “Wait! You hire women to have babies for you?” Serah demanded. She struggled to twist around so that she could look at the pair of goblins beside her, but the male was still holding her slightly off the ground by the back of her coat.

  I groaned and rubbed my temple with my left hand. We didn’t need to get into this now. The ex-­cop was well-­informed when it came to many things about the occupants of Low Town, but apparently there were holes in her education.

  “Where did you think they got the babies?” I murmured.

  The look she gave me made it clear that she thought they had been stolen from their cribs. While that was their old way of doing things, the result was that they had the cops hunting them down, which was really bad for business. Now the goblins just hired poor women with few options when it came to making any kind of good income. When it came to the actual conception of the babies, that’s where my own knowledge fell short. I didn’t see these guys paying women to go to a sperm bank for artificial insemination.