A Darker Crimson

by Carolyn Jewel

  For a disastrous stretch of eternity, terror ruled. Then, Claudia’s mind divorced itself from her body. Flight wasn’t possible so fight she would. She palmed another bit of plastic explosive and transferred her weapon to her left hand. The grip felt awkward. Acrid smoke floated in the air.

  She had no doubt that if she fired on this lovely fellow her gun would implode like the Street Sweeper had. Damn. She felt all the old attitude coming back and then some; she didn’t give a damn about anybody but herself because nobody gave a rat’s ass about her. No backup? No detectives, no B-Ops? Nothing but her and her wits. “You’re under arrest.”

  “Human female.” It was a normal voice coming from something that looked like a monster, and that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  She tossed her explosive, but, as she’d expected, the beast flicked its hand and it disappeared in a weak little poof. All the same, the concussion knocked her flat on her butt. Some of her calm vanished. This monster was strong. She scrambled to her feet as it advanced and wondered what to try next. Boiling blue eyes glared back at her. The thing looked like one of those snout-nosed devils perched on the walls of Notre Dame, only a lot scarier. She felt…well, about the only way she could describe the sensation was to say it was probing around her. Curious, that was. And then it fixed on her. She raised her weapon. Her heart went pit-a-pat because she wasn’t close enough to guarantee a fatal shot, and she was pretty sure anything less would mean funeral services and “Amazing Grace” for the late Officer Claudia Donovan.

  “You have courage, human.” Whatever it was, it spoke with a British accent. The hoity-toity kind that got you killed where she came from, no questions asked. It laughed again. “Much courage, human.”

  “Let me go, and I’ll show you some more.”

  “Is that a promise?” The thing sneered at her, upper lip curling.

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “Why not?”

  The monster’s skin gave off the smell of sulfur and charred air. “Humans,” it said, “cannot be trusted.”

  She glanced at the two bodies. “Wasn’t any human killed your buddy over there.”

  “The Mahsei died well.”

  Claudia’s heart dropped to her toes. “Mahsei?” She fought to make a plan: establish a dialog, and maybe she wouldn’t get fried. Maybe. “Is that what you are? A Mahsei demon?”

  “Mahsei?” It sounded insulted. “Elismal, human. Elismal demon.”

  “Well.” She nodded like that fascinated her. “Okay. Elismal.” Whatever that meant. “So, um, what brings you here?”

  “Come to me, Claudia Donovan,” it crooned. “I can make you a god. Come, and immortality is yours.”

  “Gee, thanks.” She didn’t like that it knew her name. How did it know her name? She shrugged. “Maybe another time.” She tapped her Glock, praying the demon would take just three more steps. “I was a god last week.”

  The creature sneered. Its tongue flicked out over a pair of sharp upper incisors. She wondered if maybe it was some kind of vampire. Maybe it was some kind of vampire-wolf hybrid. Except, that was impossible. Some rumors were just too wild to be true.

  “Fool,” it growled.

  “Yeah, well, you aren’t the first to point that out.”

  Another half-second passed. If the demon or whatever the hell it was, wanted to kill her, this time it wasn’t going to miss. The chopper sounded closer, practically overhead. The authorities must have registered the explosions. She hoped. Chances were about a zillion to one they’d see anything before she was dead. Or worse. Thanks to B-Ops, Inter-Regional Air Safety wasn’t equipped to deal with paranormal manifestations. Hell, she doubted even anyone in B-Ops was equipped to deal with this fellow. Like as not, given the thing’s present physical form, I.R.A.S. would mistake it for a werewolf, and that would be that. I.R.A.S. never interfered with werewolf conversions. Claudia, however, didn’t intend to end up dead or worse. Not if she could help it. Behind her back, she loaded her alternate clip: bullets with enough silver to take down nine-foot-tall wolf.

  The monster grinned again, edging away, giving her an opening. It really did take her for a fool, because any idiot could see she was in over her head. About a thousand miles over, she’d say. The thing, the demon, super vamp, mutant werewolf—whatever the F it was, it wasn’t an idiot. It knew as well as she that the sensible thing for her to do was sprint for the apparent safety of the street and run like hell. She reconsidered her options.

  Glock in hand, she found her balance, gathered her legs under her and sprang straight toward it with a demented banshee yell. The demon reacted a shade slower than it ought. It had expected her to run for the street. At least she was right about surprising it. And right about ending up near enough to trap it. In fact, notwithstanding the unusual opening of her counterattack, this was a textbook werewolf liquidation. According to her purloined B-Ops Field Training Guide, this worked in every classroom simulation.

  Too bad the beast wasn’t surprised enough. And too bad it wasn’t a werewolf. Because when she landed, her foot skidded on a sheet of waxy wrapping from a burger. Some people just couldn’t be bothered to dispose of their trash. There she was: off-balance and so close the thing could reach out one glittering-sharp talon and touch her. Close enough for her to feel waves of white-hot hate. Close enough to see a jeering smile split its face and expose gleaming, hungry teeth, all of them sharp. Panic set in. Hers, not the demon’s. The demon didn’t look the least bit panicked. But, then, the demon wasn’t afraid because it wasn’t in over its snouty little head. She got the gun up, but her aim didn’t account for the recoil. Shit. The bullet slammed into the side of the construction trailer.

  “Wealth.” It gestured as if to a mountain of gold. Graceful, for a monster. “Jewels. Come with me, and I will give you ten thousand times more riches than you desire.”

  “Nah.” She tightened her fingers on her Glock. The metal felt hot. She wasn’t going anywhere with this thing. Not ever. No way. “If you’re giving me a choice, I’d rather die.”

  “Love,” it crooned. “Ecstasy every time you make love. Men enslaved at your exquisite feet. A particular man, if you wish it.”

  “Death for me, thanks.”

  One demonic eyebrow lifted. “A woman, then?” it smoothly said, and it briefly changed shape into a woman. “As beautiful as you?”

  She took another step forward. The backs of her knees turned to Jell-O. Almost there. No missing this time. “Could we get on with this already?”

  “Give yourself to me, and I will make you the most powerful human in the Overworld. All will tremble at your feet.”

  “No thanks.” She lifted her Glock.

  The air around her shivered, pulsed, a focused cloud of deadly energy coalescing around her. She felt the monster trying to work its way into her head. Snick. She was in range. Her aim was perfect. Dead-on perfect. Three to four feet was more than in-range. The demon howled and loosed an attack of energy so dense the air around her steamed and sparked. She squeezed the trigger of her pistol and, swear to God, she saw her bullet come out and melt in mid-air. With a curse, she dropped the Glock before it burned her hand.

  In a moment of crisis, instinct is a beautiful thing. There’s no time for better judgment; you have whatever choice came with the moment. Claudia flexed at the hips, lofted her legs into the air and scissored. Blue energy seared the air and crackled like lightning on a power line. Heat nicked the tip of her shoulder and burned. She screamed because getting scorched hurt. Her leading leg struck the demon in the kidney. If it had a kidney. It grunted, but otherwise didn’t budge. Pain shot up her shin and into her knee.

  The ground came up fast. She hit hard, bent arms cushioning the impact, and kept rolling. Her hand landed on her Glock. She grabbed it by the muzzle and just about scorched her palm. Another gout of fire erupted over the ground two inches from her left foot. She tapped the release on her arm pack and another plastique charge slid into her open palm. She prayed the d
amned stuff would work this time and kept her legs relaxed beneath her, no mean feat, considering she’d been this frightened only once before in her life, and compared to this, thinking a vamp was going to make her was a walk in a field of daisies.

  The demon’s reflexes made hers look like frozen tar. Being at a physical disadvantage was nothing new, not since day one of the Academy. She still compensated for her lack of brawn by training like a maniac. Not in the weight room, but in the dojo where, in truth, she claimed only mediocre competence. Anybody could whip her in a fair fight. She’d mastered every pressure point in the book, plus she fought dirty. In close, sometimes the advantage shifted to her.

  The smell of charred air increased. The hair on the back of her neck lifted. Without hesitation—that instinct thing again—she swung her upper leg in a low, sweeping semicircle. Her instep collided with the back of the demon’s knee. She doubled over and punched the soft region of its inner thigh near the femoral artery, a pressure point that, properly struck, collapsed the knee. The demon’s leg bobbed but immediately locked again. Blue vapor roiled above its head. Fire hissed into a pile of re-bar. The metal glowed blue then red then white. By now, she was convinced the demon didn’t intend to kill her. Not yet, anyway. And she didn’t question anymore whether the thing was a demon. It was. It had to be.

  She roundhouse-kicked again, aiming for the femoral pressure point. The demon stumbled, and then, in a flicker, stood perfectly balanced on cloven hooves. A nice touch. It roared. A scaly arm shot out, fingers going around her throat like a vise. She brought up a knee and kicked the monster in the back, a shot to the dorsal area about as effective as before. She fought off her terror and kneed the bastard again while she threw her weight down and away. Their two bodies hit the ground as she hooked her fingers in its collarbones, sliding a thumb into the soft spot over the carotid artery. They rolled in dirt and trash. The demon ended up on top, compressing her torso, suffocating her.

  Its fingers tightened around her throat and her bleeding shoulder and she felt eight individual talons slice her skin. She wasn’t sure which hurt worse. Through swirling blue vapor, Claudia stared into cold, cold eyes the color of the sky at high noon. Right before the demon spoke, blue mist floating on its breath, she felt it gather itself, focusing on breaking into her head. “You are strong for a female human,” it said. Whether it spoke aloud or just in her mind, she didn’t know. “Worthy.”

  She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe.

  The demon found leverage. The blue vapor condensed, became a deep, uncanny hue. Claudia felt it working its way into her. Terror consumed her. The demon laughed, a joyous sound. Something maleficent slipped around her, into her, cradling her, touching her thoughts and feeding on her terror.

  Claudia opened her fist. A reflection of the ball of plastique she held glinted in her foe’s boiling eyes. Too bad if the explosion killed her, too; she steeled herself and tossed the tiny ball, so close she couldn’t miss this time. But, like her Glock, the plastique didn’t work right. It sizzled and imploded, rattling the air. The sensation in her head vanished. The demon didn’t. It continued to press in on her, refusing to give up. Blue vapor reappeared around its head and quickly refocused on her. Odds were slim to none she could withstand another attack. Her heart bottomed out.

  “Donovan!” someone shouted. With a rush of elation, Claudia recognized the voice: Matthew Jaise, B-Ops battalion commander recently attached to the L.A.P.D. At last.

  Claudia couldn’t see past the demon, who had turned its head toward the disruption. The monster hauled her to her feet, but kept a crushing grip on her throat. Air became a precious commodity. In all her time on the force she hadn’t ever been happy to see B-Ops. Until now.

  The demon whipped its head back to her, shoulders dipping, and Claudia’s line of sight improved. Not just Jaise, thank God. There were several B-Ops commandos looking mean and armed to kill. The bunch of sanctimonious blow-hards. On the bright side, she might not die today. There was that. The men moved into attack position.

  “Friends of yours?” The demon’s fingers loosened around her throat, and she managed to touch her toes to the ground.

  “Got a problem with that?” Hard-scrabble Lower echoed in her every syllable. She hadn’t slipped up with her speech patterns since her second term at college.

  “Claudia Donovan,” it said.

  Honest to God, she still couldn’t tell if it said her name out loud or just in her head. She brought up her Glock and pointed it right at the demon’s forehead. The weapon’s grip heated, started to burn her palms. “Let me go,” she said. “I won’t miss at this range.”

  “Courage,” it said, as if it were pleased. The air around them shimmered and pulsed with energy.

  Claudia pulled the trigger. Her weapon kicked, flicked her wrists up. Her eardrums throbbed with the explosion. She saw the muzzle flash. But nothing happened to the demon.

  “Donovan!” Commander Jaise’s voice held a shrill urgency that was unusual for a guy with the rep of being cooler than a cucumber on ice. “Hold your fire, Officer. Don’t shoot!”

  The demon struck the underside of Claudia’s hands, which still quivered from the shot. Her gun flew into the air. Well, okay. Not good. Like some kind of slow-motion vid she and the demon watched the gun spiraling through the air, all the plastic parts melting and turning edge-over-angle as if falling through water. The charred air smell returned. The gun continued its absurd butterfly descent, and then, right between her and the demon, it twinkled once and vanished.

  A burst of energy split the air and hit Claudia with enough force to send her reeling toward blackout. Only she hadn’t been physically struck, since the weapon had just vanished into thin air. The demon’s eyes flashed a darker crimson.

  Claudia heard Jaise continue shouting, an edge of desperation in his voice now. This time, the thing was going to kill her. Which, come to think of it, probably meant she wouldn’t feel a thing. But there would be that one moment of agony, and she wasn’t too keen on the idea of that. So instead of waiting for B-Ops to get its act together or for the demon to crisp her into oblivion or find its way inside her head, she brought up her knee and kicked the demon in the crotch as hard as she could, hoping its anatomy was human enough for that to work. At the same time, she chopped both sides of its neck. Her hands went numb, but it let her go.

  She dropped like a rock, rolling even before she landed. From the corner of her eye, Claudia saw Matthew Jaise standing with his legs spread. She didn’t care if she sounded like she’d grown up in a gutter because, in point of fact, she had. “Jaise! Fry it, you fucking moron!”

  The B-Ops commander imitated a block of cement. Was he insane? Arms out, he aimed his weapon. At her. The other B-Ops commandos were doing the same. Jaise lifted one hand, his face intent because he was listening to instructions through his comm link. The demon watched the scene play out with an amused expression. Its fangs showed in a way that made her think it got a joke she didn’t.

  Jaise closed his eyes and lowered his hand in an executioner’s chop. His Magnum pointed right at Claudia’s head.

  “Jaise!” she shouted.

  His finger squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter Three

  Pain boiled through Claudia. Flaming hot needles pierced her shoulder. She opened her eyes and fought to consciousness. Blazing light seared her retinas, and she screwed her eyelids shut. For some minutes, the world consisted of the pain in her eyes and shoulder, and the oddness in her head that seemed to have wrapped her brain in cotton. Eventually, though, she noticed the rest of her body: aching, throbbing. She didn’t dare move her arm for fear the pain would take off the top of her head, but she did shift her legs. Movement was good. Agonizing, but good to know she could move.

  She lay on a hard and unforgivingly icy surface. But for her shoulder, which felt on fire, she was cold. She groaned. She could make noise. Oh, good. Another bodily function retained. Movement and vocalization? Good. Jeez, her h
ead hurt. Check that. Her brain hurt.

  She turned her head from side to side then cracked her eyes a slit. Still white. After a moment, shades of white. Pressure in her head. Not between her ears, but down toward the base of her neck. Pressure, and an ironic sensation of comfort and pleasure and warmth, ironic because she wasn’t at all comfortable. She hoped to God she hadn’t suffered some form of cognitive damage. L.A.P.D. didn’t allow damaged cops on the streets, and she couldn’t afford to lose her job. Her brain insisted she lay stretched out warm and comfortable and that she ought to continue doing so for some period of time yet to come. She shivered, but her head said her body felt exactly the opposite. Warm and comfy she was not.

  Sudden awareness. Startlement. And with an odd thwip, something felt gone. Withdrawn. Or, rather, the sensation was like an ebbing, like the tide going out, because the oddness in her head didn’t go away.

  Her body distracted her again. Her shoulder hurt. Recollections slipped into focus: her falling Glock. A Magnum aimed at her head. Jaise’s hand coming down, giving the kill command. Hell. She’d been shot. In the head. By B-Ops commander Matthew Jaise.

  In which case, why wasn’t she dead? She ought to be. Matthew Jaise had a rep in the city: tough, accurate, quick on his feet. He’d never failed a mission. Never. He didn’t fail, and he didn’t miss. He just didn’t. Claudia saw her gun falling, imagined it striking her body, falling through her head and down into the base of her skull. No. Not the gun, something else. The demon? Behind her tight-shut eyes, she saw Jaise. All the old reactions kicked into full force. Handsome, smooth, forbidden and upper-class Matthew Jaise. Pointing a Magnum at her. Images clicked through her head. He had another rep as a hardcore Romeo. Jaise the sex machine. Jaise the two-timer. Jaise the heartbreaker. Thank God by the time he’d gotten around to her she’d seen the damage he’d done and hadn’t given him the time of day. Didn’t matter how good the sex might be, she wasn’t interested in adding to his legend. Holly deserved better than to have a mother who wasted her time with jerks like Matthew Jaise.