by T. G. Ayer
Now, she believed.
Wings were a damned good reason to believe.
So were chakras and trishulas.
Vee had just ducked behind a large box when it exploded, sending her flying backward. Shards of wood turned into a barrage of deadly missiles as they flew through the air. Vee landed hard on her back, narrowly missing a squadron of jagged stakes. The trishula clinked as it hit the floor and Vee felt the wings at her back crumpling beneath her weight. She knew by now not to be too concerned with smashing or folding the fragile appendages; they seemed impervious to that kind of damage.
Bullet-holes were another thing altogether.
Her wing now throbbed where the bullet had ripped it apart, aggravated from falling onto the injured appendage, and as she rolled over and scrambled for cover behind the nearest support column—a massive square concrete pole—Vee struggled for breath.
She forced herself to calm down, her mind going to her grandmother, Radha, channeling some of the matriarch’s sense of peace. As Vee exhaled, she felt a veil of calm envelop her, and her thoughts cleared, the fog of pain evaporating, her mind quickening.
Vee reached for the chakra strapped to her waist. As soon as her fingers grazed the carved metal it began to shimmer, the gold letting off an intense glow. Vee frowned, aware the light would call attention to her hiding-place behind the pole. She drew a glamor over the weapon, the way Syama had taught her, summoning the power of the elements to camouflage the chakra’s heavenly luminescence.
Vee had been passionately learning how to cast a glamor, pleasantly surprised to find the skill within her range of powers. The ability hadn’t yet reached optimum efficiency though, so she worked with the assumption of a fifty percent chance of failure to hide herself.
Vee blinked. And now she hit an all-time low. The glamor wasn’t working. She considered a second try, but she didn’t have the time to mess around.
Instead, she took a breath, lifted her chin and yelled, “Stop. Give up. You know you’ve got nowhere to run.” Her words echoed around the warehouse, disappearing into the rafters high above.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Vee’s assailant replied, his tone a deep, gravelly baritone. “You’re injured. I can tell you’re in pain.” He took a long, loud and lusty breath and then let out a howling laugh. The sound was manic and held a note of utter joy within it.
Shit.
Vee scrambled for ideas. The bhayakara demon she fought was one who lived on pain, who created disharmony and grief in order to feed off the agony his victims experience. She’d never known such a thing was possible until Karan had called a few hours ago.
He’d given her a rundown on a possible pain demon loose on the streets of New York. She’d taken the case, passed the details on to her superior, Anthony Rossi, and had gone directly to the location. Which had turned out to be a warehouse filled with boxes, some of which contained bad imitations of life-sized Greek and Roman statues.
She grimaced as she ducked behind the pillar to avoid being hit in the face by a chunk of curved white buttocks. Near Vee’s foot was a lone breast, pale white with the nipple chopped off. Hard to tell if it had once belonged to a girl or a guy.
Vee shook her head. Focus.
Bhayakara were tricky demons, surreptitiously feeding on human pain and terror, deliberately causing that fear over a period of time. They were intelligent, diligent, and persistent.
And when they were desperate they became dangerous, and often careless.
Vee had gotten lucky that this particular demon hadn’t fed in a while. He’d been desperate for a dose of energy-giving terror and had left a strong aural image at the home of his most recent victim. The woman had barely been alive, sucked dry of her emotions, but Vee had seen enough of his aura trail to follow him right to the warehouse.
She ducked down, thinking hard. A row of twenty-foot containers shielded her, though probably not for long. She raised her wings and tested them, glad to see that they appeared to be fully functional despite the gaping hole in the top of her right wing. The sight of it filled her with fury, and she dusted them out and softened her stance.
Bouncing on her knees, Vee flapped her wings and surged into the air, twisting and turning as the bhayakara followed her with a hail of gunfire. The demon was of the kind that seemed to like bigger weapons to compensate for his own inherent weaknesses.
He lived on the physical pain of others, but Vee suspected that he’d not tolerate pain well when inflicted upon himself. She banked left in a sharp turn and swooped down behind him, wincing as bullets slammed into concrete behind her, creating large gashes in ceilings and support columns and staircases.
He was far too indiscriminate, clearly blind to the fact that his behavior was likely to bring the building down onto his own head. Idiot.
Vee smiled though. She could use that against him. She sank between the crates, then scurried along the floor, hiding within the shadows. Gunshots echoed overhead, blasting away the corner of the crate in front of her. He’d created a large gap between her current hiding place and the next stack of palleted boxes.
Vee remained still and waited. Sure enough, he continued to riddle the crates ahead of her with bullet-holes. Vee smiled, watching as he drew closer and came into view, first a muscled shoulder and then a bulked-up torso, as he took small steps in a tight circle.
Trigger-happy asshole.
Chapter 52
“I can feel your pain.”
His words were slurred, and Vee wasn’t sure if it was the structure of his vocal chords or if he always sounded that drunk.
“Stop wasting your time, woman. You either come willing or die trying to escape.”
Not a chance, buddy.
Vee pulled her chakra away from her back where she’d been holding it to hide its glow from the demon. She didn’t care if he saw it now. It would be too late for him anyway.
She raised the chakra and sent it spinning toward him. The weapon made an odd sound, a sort of low thrum that reminded Vee of a helicopter’s blades as they rotated before takeoff.
The sort of sound that made a person want to duck.
Not our fearless demon, though.
He turned in the direction of the oncoming chakra, a frown twisting his chunky black eyebrows together. His lips lifted and his wide mouth glittered with dagger-sharp teeth.
The deathly fine edge of the curved blade barely skimmed the top of the demon’s head as he crouched to avoid the beheading. Then he got to his feet, grinning as he turned to face Vee, his lips turning up in a self-satisfied smirk.
“Thought you were smart, huh, little human?” he rasped, his nose ring glittering in the light. A demon with body-piercings.
How original.
Vee leaned against the concrete column beside her and smiled pleasantly at him. Her wings still throbbed but she revealed none of her discomfort to her quarry.
He frowned, probably annoyed with her lack of response. “What? Nothing to say when you fail?”
Vee shrugged. “Nothing to say because I didn’t fail.”
He lifted a brow. “You must be confused, little human.”
“Nope. Not confused at all.”
Vee kept smiling as the chakra returned on its journey back to her, even as it closed in on the grinning demon.
He frowned as the low humming of the spinning weapon drew closer, the almost hollow sound echoing around the warehouse. He began to pivot, and the movement—along with his turning neck—only made it easier for the blade of the chakra to do its work.
The weapon sliced through muscle, sinew, and bone with such ease that for a moment Vee felt bad. Until the demon’s human glamor flickered and dissolved, revealing his true form.
Vee’s attention was drawn to the demon as his body shuddered from the impact. She watched as his skin pulsed as though something lived beneath it, the pustules covering his body glistening as if about to burst. His eyes bulged as the blade made its way through his spine and severed his head fr
om his body.
She raised her hand and caught the gleaming weapon in her fingers, grimacing at the feel of the metal slick with demon blood. But her attention was only partially on the gore covering her palms. Vee found that she was tempted to look away as the head began to tilt and fall from the bhayakara’s neck. But she forced herself to watch. She was the executioner, and she had to hold herself accountable. It would be so easy to turn into a vigilante, seeking vengeance and wreaking havoc.
She refused to be that, whether it meant she would turn into a tool wielded by the gods, or if it meant she’d be a crazy paranoid creature on a path to vengeance.
So she made herself watch as the head turned over and over, the demon’s lifeless eyes staring at her as if he were still living, intent on getting his own brand of revenge.
His head hit the concrete floor with a hollow thunk and Vee winced, half expecting the skull to crack, for it to burst like an egg smashing into the ground. Instead, it merely rolled along the floor and came to a stop against a concrete support pole.
Vee shifted her attention back to the body which still stood in the same position, as if he were a little stunned and confused as to what had happened. Then he lurched forward, his knees giving way as he fell. He hit the ground and would have landed face-first had he still been in possession of his head.
As it was, the impact with the ground sent a gush of blood out of the gory opening at the bhayakara’s neck. Vee sidestepped just in time, avoiding the splash of blue-black blood.
Weapon in hand, she decided it was time to get gone. She didn’t want to be around for the next stage of this particular demon’s death-song. Unfortunately, even as she hurried away across the floor of the warehouse, the smell of sulfur and ammonia still managed to follow her.
She held her breath and strode off, eyes ahead, searching the rafters, scanning the aisles of stacked boxes as she weaved between the supporting pillars. Vee rounded another pillar, and paused, glad she could no longer smell the demon.
And she never saw him coming.
When Vee thought about it later, she had to admit that she’d had no reason to believe anyone else was in the shipping warehouse other than herself and the bhayakara.
The arrogant demon had been careless. Now he was dead.
And, it seemed likely that if Vee didn’t get to her senses fast enough, she’d be just as dead.
Something large, musclebound, and strangely cold hit her broadside and sent her flying into the concrete support pillar that she’d just passed. She slammed hard into it, feeling the bones in her spine crack loudly, feeling the staff of the trishula cut into her ribs, feeling the surge of pain as her injured wing was jarred behind her.
The pillar stopped Vee’s escape, allowing her no clear way out.
She slid to the ground, blinking hard to get a good view of her attacker. She’d already been able to ascertain a few things: tall, swarthy, cold-blooded. A man and yet not anything like a man.
Vee lifted her gaze and met the cold silver eyes of a pey demon.
Fudge.
Vee swallowed and backed up, sliding a little to the left of the concrete pillar. Her eyes were wide as she stared into the creature’s cold gaze. She was so very dead. Pey demons were nothing to joke about. Meeting one face-to-face rarely resulted in anything but death.
And her hellhound-slash-warrior-slash-bodyguard was nowhere to be found. Vee so needed a fairy godmother right now.
Vee gritted her teeth. It had been her own choice to head inside the warehouse after the demon without backup. Speaking of backup, shouldn’t they have arrived by now?
The pey let out a soft growl, lifting his horned head into the air.
Shit.
Vee recognized that movement, wishing her glamor was good enough to use to extricate herself from the danger she now stared in the face.
The pey demons was calling out to someone. Partner or mate, Vee didn’t want to find out for herself. She had to do something. Fast.
At her side, the trishula still cut into her ribs, its awkward angle making its position more than painful. Vee moved her hand up her thigh, aware that the demon’s red eyes were tracking her fingers as she slid it toward the weapon. She lifted her other hand, reaching for her chakra, successfully distracting the creature long enough for her to grab the triple-bladed spear and give it a firm shake.
The movement allowed the magically endowed spear to take its full form. The golden blade lengthened, and even as it grew longer, Vee was spinning it around, holding it at her shoulder like a javelin.
During the last two months, Vee had been schooled in the use of the weapon Lord Shiva had bestowed upon her, had spent hours practicing hard in the hopes that someday—when the time came—she’d be able to use it either to protect herself, or to save someone else, and to honor the god who’d seen fit to give such a priceless treasure to her.
She hadn’t exactly imagined the scenario being that of defending her life against a pey, of all creatures. They weren’t even supposed to be out of whatever hell it was that they had been banished to.
Vee was about to send the trishula hurtling through the air, hoping to impale the oncoming demon, when a noise to her right drew her attention for a fleeting second. Another demon lingered there, soot-black hair in disarray, a bloody smile on her face, her demon teeth gleaming.
Double shit.
Chapter 53
A pey was bad enough. But when faced with his better half, things went to hell in a handbasket fast.
The peymakilir, likely the mate of the demon salivating over Vee, growled low and rasping. The sound was enough to distract Vee from her aim.
As if they had planned their course of action, both demons ran at Vee. Instinct ruled her limbs as she lowered the trishula so the end sat at her hip, its point aimed at the pey. His mate, however, Vee had little defense against. Her chakra was on the other side of her body, lodged between her hip and the pillar, her satchel she’d left at home, having decided at the time that this job didn’t need a bag of stuff that went kablooey.
Bad move.
She felt for the knives strapped to her thigh, grabbed one and released it straight at the demonwife. The blade hit the creature in her chest with a loud thunk, but she still kept coming. In a second smooth move, Vee grabbed blade number two, noted that the pey was a yard from her and still on his way to impalement, and let the knife loose.
The second blade hit the peymakilir in the throat, but she still kept coming.
Vee’s heartbeat ratcheted up as she considered herself, for all intents and purposes, doomed.
She inhaled sharply, convinced she was dead, and then saw a multitude of red laser lines splayed across the pillars around her. The cavalry was here, but possibly a little too late for Vee.
She exhaled and felt the impact of the pey against the three points of the trishula. To her right, the peymakilir hurled herself at Vee. Even as Vee twisted herself around and attempted to throw her spitted demon onto his mate, she was prepared, bracing for impact.
It had all happened way too fast for her to do the smart thing. Despite all her FBI training, despite her apsara training, acting on instinct had been her only option.
An explosion ripped the air and Vee ducked her head.
Someone had thought it would be a good idea to blast the head off the peymakilir before she sank her teeth into Vee’s throat.
Again, a move born out of instinct.
Vee felt a moment of relief at not being alone in lack of smarts. Had Vee been in that agent’s place, a rifle would have been sufficient. A bullet to the brain, and then move fast, perform the rites and toss the body into the nearest fire.
Vee sighed and twisted back upright, allowing the trident to drop to the ground and release the pey. He was barely alive, with a triple blade to the gut insufficient to put him out of his misery.
His mate, on the other hand, was definitely dead.
Vee got to her feet slowly and tugged the trident out of the pey’s bod
y. She wanted to tell the agents who had surrounded her that they were wasting their time taking the bodies back to the lab in the hopes of researching the biology of these creatures.
Rossi had recently mentioned that they’d wanted to study the demons in the hopes that the R&D division could look into the development of ammunition to help Vee’s team defend themselves against the demon horde that seemed to steadily become larger and harder to fight.
But Vee knew what would happen to the two demons within a few hours after death. The pey and his mate would not die as the bhayakara demon had—in a puddle of ammonia and sulfurous muck. No. The pey couple would disintegrate, their bodies rapidly drying until a mere movement would disturb the pile of ash they would become. Ash so pure that nothing—not even DNA—would remain for testing purposes.
It was sad and amusing at the same time.
Black-clad agents milled around as Vee got to her feet using the trishula to support her weight. Vee sniffed herself and wrinkled her nose. She needed a bath. Badly.
But, with Assistant Director Rossi’s head bobbing in the distance as he made his way toward her, she knew she had no place to run. Something splattered the floor at Vee’s left ankle, and she glanced down. The chakra was dripping demon sludge.
Just fabulous.
The trishula had ceased its magical glow and now shivered, as if it somehow sensed the presence of so many people. Vee held it up and waited as it shrunk in size, allowing her to attach it to the sling at her shoulder.
Rossi approached—wrapped warmly in a dark wool-lined coat—and Vee was relieved to find Brent Cadiz with him. At least Brent would be on her side. She straightened and turned to face the two men as they approached, appreciating the wary glance they gave her.
Rossi looked a little stunned. “I’m not even sure what to say,” he said staring at the sludge puddle and then at the dead pey. He seemed to be avoiding the pile of remains that amounted to the female demon.