Rage

by Doug Burbey

  "Bitch," he snarled and Kayter just smiled.

  The Vietnam Vet, a man with dark brown skin, and white curly hair snorted. "Give it up. You pushed your luck and she called you on it rather than letting you intimidate her. Good for her, wish my daughter had stood up to her asshole of a husband like that. Get out."

  "Or what?" He demanded, belligerent now.

  "Really?" She asked looking at him, now more curious than ever exactly why he was following vets. The only one in the room who would have actually done anything in the Blood Wars was the man in the corner. "You have a nice gentleman over there pointing a .38 Sig Sauer at you. Three young men standing behind you ready to kick your ass, two Vietnam Vets who will swear no one saw what happened to you, and then there is me." She leaned forward. "You've insulted me, interrupted my dinner, threatened me, and you don't know a damn thing about me. Go away." Her voice never raised but she saw the smirks of respect from the men in the room and the grins of amusement from the waitresses. That told her he'd probably been an ass but not enough to make it worth complaining about.

  He looked at the people around him, swallowed hard and threw a twenty on the table and stormed out. Kyle and his friends followed him.

  The two Vietnam vets grinned at her and gave her a saucy wink, which she returned, then headed back to their table. The man in the corner, one she didn't know or recognize but got the same feel from him as from Dad near the end, nodded at each other and his .38 disappeared.

  "Morons. I swear. Those jerks did a single tour, get picked up with a government agency, and think they are all hot shit. Sorry about all the drama. Your food will be out in a minute." The bartender stalked way, putting the bat under the counter.

  Government agency? Curiouser and curiouser. See Dad, the classics are good for snarky comments in my head.

  Kyle and his friends came back in. "He left, we made sure we didn't touch your bike, ma'am."

  "Gah," she choked. "I'm not that old. Name's Kayter, Kayter Reynolds. Thanks." Her smile was genuine and each of them blushed as she smiled at them but they headed back to their table and their pitcher of beer as the waitresses brought her food. She tucked into the good basic food, silently crowing at the mission accomplished. She'd created some allies, the entire reason she'd come.

  Kayter took a long look around the VFW parking lot before she climbed on her bike, pulling her helmet on. Agent boy hadn't been too pleased when she blew him off and just because he left didn't mean he hadn't come back.

  That proved unexpectedly fruitful. I have people on my side, and if I need it, someone, maybe, I can call on. I should have at least introduced myself to Mister .38, but still not a bad intro.

  The Chief purred it's almost silent agreement as she wove through the streets back towards the RV park. Curiosity about the man's comments before she came in remained at the forefront of her mind as she drove. The area seemed quiet but she wanted to swear she smelled demon blood in the air. That idea sent cold chills through her.

  Getting back to the RV she took the time to put the Chief back on the trailer and secured it. It only took one late night evacuation where she had to spend precious time to hook it up, to make that a habit. Once it was locked to the trailer she pulled out her sword, extra weapons, and ammo from the bags.

  Kayter glanced at the RV but shook her head. Checking up on the tracker could wait. Besides, the meeting she cared about wouldn't happen for a few days. That meant she needed to prioritize important stuff. And that meant practice. Walking over to the picnic table, she dropped everything on it but her sword. Even just holding it made the crawling on her skin recede a bit.

  Dropping her leather jacket to join her gun, she unsheathed her sword. The jian was a double edge sword rarely seen but it fit her fighting style. And with the sanmei, or three plate construction, it allowed her strength and flexibility. Dad would never tell her where he got it but he took a half pint of her blood when she turned eighteen and hadn't grown in the last year. Two months later the sword appeared.

  "It's yours, made of you and for you. It should protect you better than I can. Never let the edge dull." With that, he'd walked away, and she went to her teacher to learn how to use this new weapon.

  Now, years later, she moved into the flows, attacking enemies, practicing her form and working hard. She practiced for an hour, using all the katas her teacher had created for her, all of them with death blows for the various demon types. By the time she finished her heart hammered in her chest and sweat drenched her body, but nothing hurt, only felt nicely warm.

  With a bow to the imaginary teacher, she cleaned, then sharpened the sword, before sliding it back into its sheath. Dad had asked if she'd named it, and she'd looked at him funny.

  "It's a sword. Why would I name it?"

  He'd just chuckled and never asked again.

  The memory of his smile flashed through her mind and she smiled, but that memory pulled back at the dream, the not dream.

  Is that where I recognized the bald man? What did Dad call him? Colonel, he had a rank.

  But nothing else would come to her mind and she let it go. Forcing it wouldn't bring it up. Stepping into the RV, she headed to the shower, enjoying the heat, and washed with one of her few luxuries, ginger-scented body wash and shampoo. It smelled nothing like demons, had no memories associated with it, so she'd claimed it as hers. Something that meant nothing to her, and therefore meant everything.

  Stepping out, dressed and hair at least not dripping, she headed to the computer pulling up her tracking system. She didn't have many of these little toys. A pure tech item paid for with cash and her petty cash was running low.

  Pulling up the program on her computer, she typed in the ID of the tracker she'd dropped on the man and pulled it up. The icon lit up outside an apartment building in the area, not too far from the VFW. She set an alarm to let her know where it would be in two days, then typed in an order to store the location of any place it was at for longer than 10 minutes.

  With that, she headed to bed. She had some gear to buy tomorrow since she hadn't seen any demons stumbling around the local neighborhood.

  Chapter 10 – Coming Down

  Declan rolled down his window and punched the lock release code into the control box lifting the gate to his property entrance. He noticed his fingers still trembled as he pushed in the code. Was it the fact that he had the demon body in the bed of his truck when they shouldn't even be in his realm or the fact that the battle rage so quickly took over his body when he was unprepared?

  In the final weeks of the war, the symptoms of the rage had become common amongst the veteran hunters. Originally it was discounted as an adrenaline rush combined with residual magic exposure but the symptoms quickly abated after the inevitable splashes of blood and absorption of the demon body fluids into their bodies. It did not take the doctors, or even the hunters themselves, long to reach the conclusion that they were both related. But when coming down from the rage now, Declan had to rely on a trick that the human mages had shared with them about being able to consume little bits of yourself to counter the effects. The mages still called it the human Chi, the Fae had some weird name for it that translated loosely to one's own balancing core energy. Either way, a person's own individual reserves of this energy was finite unless replenished and the only way that humans knew how to do that was through infusion, or absorption, of a demon's own blood. Some of the human mages, what Declan thought of as corrupted ones, directly infused demon blood into their own to enhance their powers. Some did it with syringes like a heroin junkie, the more extreme went so far as to have stents implanted into an artery so they could mainline demon blood from an IV bag directly into their own, giving them a reserve of power on a battlefield. Shane had devised that trick and encouraged it among his Soldier Mages.

  Shane, who he could have called immediately for help once. But that friendship had burned with the end of the Blood War.

  Even if Shane was possibly still alive there's no way in hel
l I'm calling him for anything.

  Declan drove his truck into the woods at the back of his property and threw the drone's body into the burn pit he used to get rid of wood scraps and fallen tree limbs. After soaking the corpse in diesel fuel he ignited the drone and watched it burn, smelling the conflicting sweet but rancid odor of the burning demon flesh. It was the smell of a Blood War battlefield.

  I want more. I need more.

  Declan didn't know if the wave of nausea he felt was from the after-effects of the receding rage, the smell of the burning demon, or his own thoughts and desires but it was clear now that a Demon Hunter would never be able to live a long and quiet retirement. If he couldn't control the rage, then it would consume him when his reserves were exhausted and when hunters got consumed they usually took out a lot of other people with them. It was not a question of if, but when. Maybe he should have joined up with some of the other veterans that signed onto mercenary groups overseas to live fast and fight hard on suicide missions. Fighting hungover and high till they died in some third world shithole for a petty dictator’s civil war.

  "I can't go out like those guys. I'm not ready to quit just yet." Declan turned his back on the fire and started back towards his truck. "There has to be another way."

  Chapter 11 - Kayter and Miriam

  With the two idiot mages on her mind, Kayter wondered if she needed to pay closer attention to what magic they taught at the universities. She pulled up to a nondescript warehouse, and shut off the bike, looking at it closely.

  I hope they have what I'll need, or at least can make it. Dad said he knew them way back when, and since then they've become a name in the close-knit hunter community.

  At first glance, it just seemed to be a warehouse, but she noted the reinforced base, the heavy front door with a peep section, and a keypad next to it. The windows at the top had bars over all of them. This place should be able to withstand an assault and if they had the right ordinance, they'd be able to eliminate anyone stupid enough to try.

  Taking a deep breath, she flipped down the kickstand and slid off, walking up to the door, hand on her pistol as she approached. Standing to the side and making sure the frame of the door protected most of her body, she knocked twice.

  The peep panel slid back but she noted no one stood in front of it, any more than she did. Exposing yourself like that was a good way to die. Kayter appreciated that these people weren't idiots.

  "What?" A feminine voice said, though it had no softness in it.

  "Looking for Hunter Gear. John Reynolds referred me."

  "Oh, how is Johnny doing?"

  Kayter snorted. "Johnny would kick your ass if you called him that and he's been dead for three years."

  "Ah, killed in Detroit?"

  "No. Ypsilanti." Kayter's voice remained flat. At this point she'd accepted her dad's death even if she still thirsted for vengeance, but a lot of people had as much reason as she, if not more. She just counted each demon she killed as one step towards paying for his death.

  "How do you know him?"

  Kayter let her eyes drift closed for a second, then snapped them back open. In this new world death held no reverence. Everyone had lost someone.

  "His daughter."

  "Ah." There was a wealth of information in that word but Kayter had no idea how to interpret it. Before she could start to stress, the peep slide closed and she heard the clanking of locks and the door pulled back.

  "Welcome, guest to our home and business."

  The old formality had power in the words and Kayter suspected the speaker was a magic user of some power. If she entered it put her under obligation to respect her host and the house.

  I can live with that.

  Letting her hand drop from her pistol, though she shrugged once to feel the reassuring presence of her swords, Kayter crossed the threshold. The door closed behind her with a clang and she had to resist drawing her weapon.

  Dad said they were good people, and they gave me hospitality.

  She repeated that over in her mind as her eyes adjusted from the brightness to the more subdued lighting inside. A long counter sat to her right and a tiny woman grinned at her. She didn't even come up to Kayter’s breasts. She had tiny bones, inquisitive eyes, and dark hair in a short pixie cut.

  She heard Miriam's voice again say, "Welcome Guest, to our home and business.". There was a pause, then in a more normal voice "Welcome, Kayter Reynolds. I'm Miriam. How can we serve you today?"

  The friendly tone and small stature did a lot to ease her wariness but she still stayed alert.

  "I need some new gear and Dad said this was the only place on the East Coast to shop at."

  Miriam's face split in a grin. "He was such a charmer. Come on back and let's take a look at what you might need."

  She walked from behind the counter and led Kayter through a door at the back. As they walked, Kayter felt the various spells lick across her skin but none of them reacted. While she couldn't wield magic herself, she could sense it and all of these were intent based spells. Since she intended to spend money, it didn't have any issues with her. She filed the information in her head. All these spells meant someone here had extreme enchanting skills - skills she could use.

  The door she walked through lead into a huge workshop. At the far end, she saw a forge but it didn't seem to be in use at the moment. Workbenches were scattered everywhere and the walls were lined with enough weapons and gear that she had to actively swallow the saliva that appeared while looking at some of it. Jackets, boots, knives, swords, gloves, guns, and more things than she had names for.

  A huge man, at least a foot taller than her, sat at one of the benches. His large hands were turning metal rings into a rippling fabric of metal, each ring smaller than her pinky nail.

  The woman gave her time to take in the shop before speaking. "So Kayter, what brings you to us today? And I assume you know you carry all four blood types?" Her eyes drifted over to the swords and then scanned her body, but more in trying to see what size or style she would wear than looking for weapons. Kayter realized the man had quit working on the mail and was watching them, his body relaxed but his gaze intent.

  "Yeah, Demon, Angel, Fae, and Human I’ve been told. All in me. Does it matter?" Her voice remained flat, even as she waited for the answer.

  "Ah, an abomination. No wonder your dad was so tense. Interesting." The woman flashed her a grin. "Nope, it doesn't matter. More making sure you know how interested some parties would be in getting a hold of your blood. But not me. This is my place and nothing touches anyone here that I don't allow, but that doesn't mean I wasn't aware of it."

  The man had gone back to working with the rings, and a tightness in Kayter relaxed. The urge to stay and never leave almost brought her to her knees. With a soft growl she pushed it away, turning to face the woman instead.

  "I need an armored body suit that is flexible enough for me to use my swords. I need a new long-range weapon, preferably something that will take out a ring three with a headshot. While I can kill them up close and personal, for demons that level, I'd rather be half a mile away."

  Miriam looked her up and down, her head tilting one way and then the other, it only served to enhance the bird impression.

  "I can do the bodysuit and lace it with dampeners, though they'll only last about a year before I'll need to reapply them."

  "I can't feed the spells?"

  Miriam arched a brow. "What do you mean by feed the spells?"

  Kayter hesitated. That information could be worth something. But she couldn't know if other people could feed them or if it was only her. Since she couldn't cast the spells herself, that meant it really did her no good to keep it to herself.

  "If I put my blood on the spells, they recharge."

  "Huh." The woman said her eyes drifting off a bit. "I could see how that would work for painted or etched on spells," Kayter nodded at that, "but since I weave mine into the fabric I don't think it would work, unless you soaked the fa
bric in your blood. That might be a bit much blood to shed. Besides, I can recharge them relatively easily on a yearly basis." Miriam shrugged. "But yes, it would work though I'm not sure how long it would last."

  Kayter thought about it. "If I bleed while wearing it, will it help or hurt?"

  Miriam started to respond then stopped. "Abomination blood. Huh." She fell silent, then turned and spoke to John in a language Kayter didn't recognize. She spoke English, French, German, Spanish and enough Russian to get by. But it didn't sound like any of those.

  "If you bleed on my weavings, it should recharge but for a lesser amount of time, unlike my charges. But it will not reduce the efficiency at all. But the idea of a bodysuit is to protect you from getting cut, no?"

  "That would be preferable. When I bleed, things get difficult." It was an understated way to say that Demons went into bloodlust to get to her blood, and the Fae just went weird. Thankfully humans didn't react to her blood.

  "I imagine. Abominations are usually killed at birth when they survive at all." Miriam didn't have disgust or avarice in her words, simple academic interest. That interest Kayter could live with. "I'll have to plan something new for you; it will be extra. You'll also need some new boots. Yours are losing their integrity."

  Kayter glanced down at her worn, twice resoled boots. "But they're comfortable," she protested. Breaking in new boots took forever.

  "So are my boots, though you'll need two pairs, to let them breathe properly. Come back in two weeks. I'll have stuff for you."

  Kayter blinked, thrown off balance. "Don't you need to measure me?"

  "Full body scan equipment as you walked through, as well as capturing your walk pattern and balance on the floor in the entryway. Everything has been stored and under your name."

  "Cost?" Kayter didn't know if she really wanted the answer. This sort of equipment, handmade, enchanted equipment, carried a steep price.

  The woman shrugged. "I won't know until I make it. Not more expensive than the .30-06 custom we made and sold your dad."