by Sam Cheever
Still safe in the confines of the Viper, my eyes turned upward and found what I had been afraid I’d see.
Dark, malevolent eyes glared down at me from atop the turrets.
Gargoyles.
I shook my head and swore under my breath. They’d better stay up there or they were gonna have to waltz with me later.
My dance card was filling up fast.
Cheets turned to me and frowned. “We should have brought my cop issue like I wanted. This fine vehicle sticks out like a sore thumb in this part of town. You’ll be lucky if it’s in one piece when we get back.”
“Exiting,” I said.
The Viper’s doors swung up out of the way and Cheets and I climbed out.
“Close, climb and secure.”
The Viper pulled itself back into a streamlined bullet shape and rose into the air high above our heads. I watched for a moment to make sure my new security system kicked in. After a moment I heard a low range hum and the Viper bathed itself in a soft blue light.
Cheets grinned. “Sweet!”
“Nothing short of a laser blast will pierce that security system.” My eyes slid upward again. “Even gargoyle claws can’t touch it.”
Castle Gregg had been squatting in that devastated area of Angel City for a little over five years. In that time it had gained a rep with carefree clubbers for being the hottest nightclub in town. It had also gained a rep with the Strange Deaths Department of the police for being the most dangerous place to go after dark. Which, of course, was when everybody went there.
I led the way to the front door. I could feel the gaze of dozens of malevolent eyes on my back as I reached the huge door and knocked.
Since the nightclub was closed in daylight hours I wasn’t sure if my knock would be answered. With one of Angel City’s finest peering expectantly at me, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to break in.
Lucky for me we soon heard the light tread of footsteps on the other side of the door and, after a couple of minutes, the door creaked open just wide enough to frame a pale, human face. The young girl who answered the door was obviously demon chattel.
Her skin was so pale that deep circles stood out under light-colored eyes that looked dead. Her wispy blonde hair was flat and dirty and lay against her head as if it hadn’t been washed for days. The face she showed us was expressionless.
“Hello,” Cheets said with a smile. “We are from the police. We need to come in right now.” You had to speak to demon chattel that way because they were so out of it from a combination of chemicals, malnutrition and mistreatment that they become very slow.
The girl stared blankly at us for a few beats and then blinked. Finally she disappeared from the door but left it open. Apparently we were expected to show ourselves in.
Not a problem for me.
I shouldered my way in front of Cheets, earning a glare from her but I didn’t want her to be the first one through the door just in case there was something mean and ugly on the other side of it.
The room we entered was huge. Its ceiling rose several stories and was adorned with carved stone beams that arched upward and met in the center above an enormous chandelier.
The walls appeared to be made of stone and were covered with large tapestries that had depictions of the celestial army interspersed with representations of Hades and its inhabitants. It was a disturbing juxtaposition of good versus evil that seemed heavily weighted in the direction of evil.
It just figured.
The girl who had met us at the door stood in the center of the dimly lit space. Her head was bowed and her hands were crossed neatly in front of her body. She seemed to be waiting.
I walked up to her, casting my power around me as I went to make sure nothing was going to sneak up on us. As I got closer, I noticed the bite marks all up and down her arms. She probably had matching marks all over her emaciated body. She was wearing a long peasant type skirt and short leather boots so I couldn’t see her legs.
I knew from experience that chattel could call their masters with a thought. I figured this one already had and was waiting for him to appear. I decided to try to question her while we waited. A totally worthless effort but hey, I get bored easily if I have to wait around for very long.
“What’s your name?”
The girl didn’t move.
I tried again. “You must have a name.”
She trembled slightly but didn’t look up.
“I’m Astra.”
The girl looked up slowly. Her gaze flicked to mine for less than a beat and then dropped again.
Names meant something to demons. The gift of a name was something to be treasured. That I had given her mine was important. Apparently she wasn’t too far gone to recognize that.
“I’m looking for a pretty young woman like yourself. Her name is Margaret. Have you met her?”
The girl didn’t look up but she made a sound and I leaned closer.
She was singing something, just out of hearing. It sounded like marmarmarmar. I took a chance. “Yes. Mar Mar. She’s my friend and I’d like to see her. Can you tell me where she is?”
The girl looked up and shook her head in two quick jerks. Her pale eyes were filled with terror.
“She will not speak with you, demon slayer. Unless I allow it.”
The voice was deep and husky, with just the barest twinge of a razor-like demon quality. I knew when I turned I would see an uncommonly beautiful demon. I was not prepared though, for what I did see.
He stood about seven feet tall, with finely honed arms that were as big as my thighs. He wore a black leather vest with nothing under it and black arm bands on both biceps that only accentuated the massive girth of his arms. His legs were long and densely muscled in their tight leather pants.
His hair was thick, red-gold in color, wavy and long, falling down his back. He wore a leather band around his forehead.
The face under the band bore strong, high cheekbones over a lush, full mouth. His chin was solid and square, with a thumb sized dimple in the center. His eyes were deep-set and wide with thick golden-red lashes. The eyes were the deepest green color I’d ever seen.
He was, in short, the perfect male specimen.
I must have gulped audibly because I heard Cheets mutter from just behind my left shoulder, “Amen sister.”
I knew I was damned to Hades on this one.
How was I going to vanquish that?
Chapter Twelve
Against All Odds
The demon had a pretty face, his form a work of art,
But our young miss saw through this mask and sent him to the medi-mart.
“Mx. Phelps?”
His deep, husky voice jarred me out of my thought-filled haze. My mind had been churning trying to get a bead on a plan of action.
Cheets finally took it out of my hands. She stepped forward, holding her PC badge up for him to see. “I’m Detective Cheets of the Paranormal Cops. What do they call you?”
The gorgeous demon stood with his arms crossed, legs spread wide, like a comic book character. His beautiful sea-green eyes settled on Cheets but he said nothing.
Cheets smiled and dropped the badge. “I can bring the PC into your club in force if you’d like. It should repress your income nicely for quite a while I would think.”
He continued to watch her for a couple of beats and then turned to me. “Demon Slayer, why do you enter Castle Gregg?”
This guy was either very confident in his powers or a really good actor. He didn’t seem at all frightened by Cheets’ threat. I stepped toward his chattel and he frowned, just the tiniest little bit. “I want the woman named Margaret.”
He laughed. Expecting a rich, skin-pebbling sound, I was taken aback by the screechlike tenor of his laughter. I fought the urge to cover my ears.
Cheets lost. With a grimace she clapped her small palms over her ears and scowled at him. He simply laughed again at her discomfort.
“Don’t show him he’s hurting you, Cheets,�
�� I murmured, praying his hearing wasn’t as sharp as the royals’.
She forced her hands down to her sides and stood stiffly beside me. I was afraid to look at her face but I strongly suspected it looked like somebody had just made her eat a bug.
When he finally wound down I cocked a hip and examined one of my nails. Hmmm, turned out I needed a manicure. Then I said, “If you’re done playing your little games, I’ll take Margaret now.”
His smile showcased blunt, white demon teeth, with overlarge canines. “I think not, Slayer. You may leave my presence.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh may I?”
I turned to his little slave, standing next to us with her head bowed, her spindly, mangled arms hanging straight down at her sides. I reached out and grabbed one of her hands, pulling her into my body and under my arm.
She jerked and shivered but kept her eyes downcast.
Cheets got the picture and quickly moved to stand close to the girl on the other side, grasping a bony wrist.
My eyes slid meaningfully toward the demon. He hadn’t moved, his expression hadn’t changed but his whole aura was different. He stood in a blazing, pulsating aura of orange and red, his body was completely still and his hair blew away from his face as if in a nonexistent breeze. His eyes, as I stared into them, started to glow purple.
“Stand back, Cheets.”
Cheets turned to me, looking perplexed because the demon’s aura changes were not visible to her as a human.
On some level though she must have been aware because she kept rubbing at her forearm, where I noticed the hair had risen with the change to the air around us.
“I’ll distract him while you search for the woman.”
Cheets narrowed her eyes at me thoughtfully, as if she wanted to argue but then seemed to think better of it and simply gave me a slight nod.
I turned to the formidable demon in front of me.
“I see you want to play, demon.”
He stared at me for a beat, letting the full effect of his melodrama play itself out around us. At this point small items had started to rise up off of counter and tabletops and hang, swaying frantically in the air. Pieces of paper swirled madly in the air over our heads.
I smiled. “So. Now I know you can beat up paper. But I’m still waiting for you to take me up on my offer to play. I guess a real slayer is too much for you huh?” I cocked my head at him, thinking with a very small part of my brain that Emo would probably shake his head at me and accuse me of pissing off the bogyman just to see what he would do. I nearly smiled at that. He would be right as usual. “Shall I turn myself into paper then to give you a sporting chance?”
Well, that did it. With a roar he rose straight up off the ground and flew at me. Cheets just about had time to dive out of the way with the chattel in tow before he struck.
He hit my power bubble with a mushy splat that told me it wasn’t repelling him nearly as well as I would have liked. I concentrated on trying to up the voltage on my power a bit but no matter what I did he seemed to be one step ahead of me. His face, with the deadly looking teeth, was mere inches from my face and moving closer by the second. I could feel the heat of his breath on my face and smell his lunch.
That would be tuna. Ish!
Somehow he was working his way through my web of magic.
I focused on his aura and was confused, at first by what I saw. There should have been a distinct border between his aura and mine. I should have been able to see where he stopped and I started. But that wasn’t the case. The line between us was blurred and faded. Here and there thin fingers of power leaked from his aura into mine like tiny tributaries in a raging river.
I realized with a start that the demon was somehow mingling his aura with mine, drawing the essence of my life force into his so that he could control my magic and, I guessed, ultimately me.
Now I knew how the superdemons controlled their chattel.
Unfortunately for him, chattel I was not.
Realizing he was quickly working his way through my power bubble, I decided to throw him a curve. I tapped into the power of my daemon hickey, which contained the power of the royal devil who’d given it to me. Dialle’s power burst through me and flung the demon back to slam against the bar, thirty feet away.
He snarled and shook himself, obviously surprised by my power burst.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed.
Big mistake.
I almost didn’t see him move. While apparently superdemons can’t exactly spaceshift like the royals, they move quickly enough that it’s really just splitting hairs. Before I could blink his body covered mine and I was on my back on the floor.
His teeth, which before had been large and impressive, were now less than an inch from my face and beyond impressive into terrifying.
I gulped and shoved at him again with my hands as well as my enhanced power and he flew away again but this time he didn’t go nearly as far. He hung in the air just ten feet away from me, smiling.
I realized he was working his way through my new bubble and experienced a moment of panic. What if he were able to breach Dialle’s power? Could he make both of us into his chattel?
That was just plain scary.
And unacceptable.
I decided it was time to take the offensive.
I sprang back onto my feet and pulled a knife from my boot. Brandishing the eight inch weapon in my left hand, I flung myself onto my hands and launched myself over his head, twisting in the air so that I landed facing the back of the demon. As soon as I felt my feet hit the brick floor I plunged the knife into his broad back, right between the shoulder blades.
The demon threw back his head and screeched and it was all I could do not to drop the knife and cover my poor ears. I closed my eyes and poured a jolt of power through the knife that I’d buried up to the hilt right in the center of his back. If demons had hearts he would have been dead.
As it was he was basically just pissed off.
I leapt backward away from him before he could turn and grab me.
He threw his head back and bellowed his frustration into the cavernous space. For a moment his form shivered and flexed and I saw beyond the pretty shell a monster more horrible than I’d ever seen before.
I realized with a start that he’d fooled me with his mask like a regular demon could fool a human. Well shit!
I shifted again and landed chest to chest with the enraged critter. Before he could reach out and grab me I plunged the knife into his neck.
I’d pulled the knife back out and was across the room again before he could react.
This time, blessedly, he couldn’t screech.
Point for me.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cheets returning from another part of the nightclub with a woman in tow. I recognized Margaret from her husband’s description. Cheets gave me the thumbs up and I jerked my head toward the front door, praying she’d get the Hades out of there before the demon saw her and Margaret.
I didn’t get the chance to see if she did though, the enraged demon suddenly slammed against me and both of us flew across the room to smack hard against a stone wall.
He must have weighed the better part of two hundred fifty pounds. I weigh one hundred ten pounds on a good day. I felt like a six-legged bidjie bug splayed on the windshield of the Viper.
The impact knocked all of the air out of my lungs and I fought nausea as I struggled to regain my breath. The demon wasn’t about to let me reconnoiter though, his mouth opened and those huge, white teeth started to descend toward my throat.
I lifted my knife and tried to slam it into his side but he brought a brick-like fist down on my wrist and the knife went flying as I cried out in pain.
Those deadly looking teeth found my throat and bit down. I screamed as he worked at my throat, tearing at the flesh like a rabid dog.
One moment he was ripping away at me and the next he was airborne, hanging above me on the end of a spear of power that felt as
if it originated from my daemon hickey.
I focused and brought the power under my control, sending it from my hands to the demon and causing him to jerk even harder as if the power had grown. I guessed that it probably had grown, since I’d added my own meager stores to Dialle’s hickey stockpile.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to hate that hickey.
I wasn’t sure which of us was more surprised by the turn of events. But it quickly became apparent that the superdemon couldn’t draw from the power that currently encompassed him. This power was an obliterating power.
I watched the demon struggle on the end of the power spear like a bug on a pin, his eyes wide with horror. And then slowly, oh so slowly his image started to waver and fade. I saw the ugliness of his true form hanging there for a moment before he completely winked out.
As soon as he disappeared the power disappeared too, as if it had only existed for the single purpose of vanquishing that demon and since the demon was gone so was the power.
I leaned back against the hard rock wall, panting. Feeling a trickle of moisture running down my neck I reached up, dreading what I would find there.
Amazingly, my neck was flawless. Except for a trickle of well-earned sweat, my neck was unscathed.
Shit! I’d healed myself again. I had to find out how I was doing that.
I blinked in the sulfurous air the demon left behind and pushed myself away from the wall. I would go and find Cheets and my client and get the Hades out of there.
I didn’t get far though. A pile of clothing mounded in the center of the huge room caught my eye.
Shit!
The young female chattel was lying in a heap on the floor. It occurred to me that chattel often don’t survive the death of their masters.
Sighing, I ran to the girl and scooped her into my arms. If Cheets and I hurried, we might get her to the unplanned care unit before she died.
* * * * *
The unplanned care unit was super-terra, meaning it hung above the Earth on a mind-numbing construction of floating type devices that gained their power from the Sun.
Due to the fact that we had flown high above the legal flight stratum, the Viper had made excellent time and the girl had still been alive, if barely, when we’d arrived. Cheets and I sat in the hard, metal chairs in Waiting and my client huddled in a dim corner speaking on her miniature televisual to someone. I assumed it was her husband.