by J. Kenner
I could hardly find the missing key without my various appendages. And if I wasn't mobile, I wouldn't be much good at getting to the portal to toss myself in, either.
Not that I knew exactly where the portal was opening. I frowned and added that to my mental to-do list. Honestly, it was amazing how much preparation had to be made before the end of the world.
At the moment, though, I needed to be focused on staying whole and keeping the Oris Clef away from my buddy Jarel there. A task that, at the moment, seemed easier said than done.
They were coming at me from both ends of the alley, six on each side, and they were moving close together, as if they were one body with one purpose.
Great. A coordinated force of well-trained demons. Just what I needed.
I kept my blade sheathed and pulled out my sword. I hadn't yet made it my own, and I took care of that little detail by sliding my hand down the razor-sharp edge. A line of blood rose, and as I stared at the demons, I smeared it on my blade. "This will end you now," I said to each of them. "Make no mistake."
Unfortunately, they didn't run screaming from my announcement. So much for my scary bad-ass persona.
Just the opposite, in fact. Because two of them stepped away from one demon chorus line and started walking toward me. Then two from the other line joined the party.
Four against one, with eight held in reserve. Not good odds.
"Well, hell," I said, then went postal on their asses, swinging the sword and managing to lop off two heads with one blow. I felt like the brave little tailor, except that two demons stepped in to replace their fallen buddies, and these dudes had even bigger nasty swords. And unlike the movies, they weren't coming at me one at a time. They were all coming at once, and I really didn't have time for this. I needed to be out searching for Deacon. Not fighting demons. And certainly not getting my various body parts amputated.
I swung around hard and fast, slicing the gut of one of the approaching demons open. My blade was still in his belly when one of his buddies came at me from behind. I slammed my leg back, managing to nail him in the groin and send him tumbling backward into two of his buddies.
What I didn't anticipate, but should have, was the demon that lunged in from the side and grabbed my leg even as I was pulling back in from my thrust. Jarel, and Rachel was right—he was a mean one.
He had a solid hold on my ankle, and he twisted, forcing me to turn or lose the leg. I lunged forward as he pulled me over, leading with the sword, but my aim was seriously compromised by the fact that he was jerking me all over creation, and I ended up tumbling to the ground, landing flat on my back, the sword still in one hand but my pride utterly lost.
Not that I had time to think about pride or swords or battle plans, because Jarel was on me, his own knife out, and he was coming at me. I lashed up with the sword, hoping to slice him in two at the gut, then cried out in pain as my blade hit something metallic and solid.
Chain mail. The little fuck was actually wearing medieval-style armor under his Boston Celtics T-shirt.
Honestly, I had to admire his preparation if not his sentiment, but not too much, because he'd fucked my arm up bad. So much so that when I tried to redirect my aim to his neck, I smashed uselessly against his upper torso. My whole arm was tingling, as if it were one giant funny bone, and even though I'm much better fighting with my right hand, I transferred the sword—or I tried to. Because he dove on me midtransfer, wresting the blade from my hand and pressing the tip against my neck.
"Killed by your own blade, bitch," he said. "There isn't much less honorable than that."
"Screw you," I said, trying to figure out how the hell I would get out of this predicament.
"I should keep you alive," he said, apparently not realizing that I already had that base covered. "I'd like to see you kneel before me when I ascend to the throne. Kneel before me now," he added with a leer, "and maybe I will spare your life."
"Happy to," I said. "So long as you don't mind losing your cock when I bite down hard." I shifted, grimacing, and felt the tip of the sword cut into my flesh. Damn.
I really didn't have a lot of options. I was pretty much down to hoping he wouldn't actually disconnect my head, when his muscles tensed, and he whispered, "Die now." But before he had the chance to make that command a reality, he went flying sideways across the alleyway, something small and lithe clinging to him like a monkey.
I didn't bother to question the odd nature of such timely assistance. Instead, I scrabbled to my feet, grabbed my sword, which he'd dropped, and lashed out hard, mowing down two demons who were staring dumbstruck at the spectacle.
So was I, now that I turned in that direction: Morwain had latched onto Jarel, his sharp incisors yanking the skin of the demon's shoulders off, his clawed hands ripping the flesh all the way down to the bone.
I looked away. Help was one thing, but . . .
The cluster of demons did not rush to assist Jarel, but neither did they run away. Just the opposite. Morwain's attack seemed to have mobilized them, and instead of a fight, I found myself in the middle of a mob. There was no rhyme or reason, simply slashing and stabbing, thrusting and defending.
Over the din, I heard Morwain calling for support, then a second voice.
Rose.
"Get inside," I shouted, thrusting with my blade, then pulling it back out. The demon fell away in a puddle of goo, and I drew in the strength and played off it, using the demon's own essence to take down the two buddies nearest it.
Yes. Oh, heaven help me, but yes, yes, yes.
I wanted more, and I had demons for the choosing.
As the power rushed through me, I wasn't seeing the cluster of demons so much as a scary mob, but instead as a delicious buffet. And I was determined to sample it all.
"Lily! Behind you!"
I whipped around, lopping off the head of an attacking demon. "Dammit, Rose, get back inside!"
"I just saved you!"
"I would have been fine," I countered, and was rewarded with a dubious snort.
"Mistress," Morwain called. "The odds. Go. Go and protect the crown."
Honestly, I was half-tempted. If I could get inside the damn pub, maybe I could get out the front door and leave the alley to these crazed demons. I mean, I was all for reducing the demon population, but I needed to go find Deacon.
"Come on," I said to Rose. "We're going in."
Except the door burst open, and Rachel came out.
"Dammit!" I cried, thrusting sideways to nail an approaching demon. "What part of 'stay safe inside' do you people not understand?"
Of course Rachel ignored me, shouting out that I needed to toss her the car keys. I didn't argue. What was the point?
As I tackled a handful of demons, Rose whacked away at another cluster, clearing Rachel's path to the car. I got a little distracted by the demon aiming at my face with a mace, but when he suddenly became roadkill—courtesy of Rachel's raging Mercedes—I had to admit that she'd caught my attention.
The demons' attention, too. There were only a handful left, and they finally scattered, bowled over not by the awe and fear they felt toward Prophecy Girl but persuaded instead by the silent purr of German engineering.
I stood in the carnage, letting the dark essence rage through me.
I tilted my head back and drew in a deep breath—and saw someone dressed all in white standing on the roof of one of the restaurants across the alley. I squinted, trying to figure out who it was.
Gabriel?
Except it didn't look a damn thing like Gabriel. And if it was Gabriel, why wasn't he swooping down to catch me?
Footsteps echoed behind me, and I turned to find Rachel trotting toward me. "Do you know him?" I asked, jerking my chin toward the rooftop.
She squinted, then shook her head. "Not a regular in the bar. Are you worried?"
"Not sure," I admitted. "Maybe I need to pop up there and see what he wants."
"And maybe you need to go find Deacon," Rose said. She w
as looking at the roof, too, her brow creased as she frowned.
"Rose? What's up?”
"Nothing," she said, although I didn't believe her.
"Do you know who that is?"
She turned to me, shoulders dropping and head tilting to one side as exasperation oozed off her. "Like I know a lot of demons?"
"You've encountered a few," I said, but her point had been made.
"I'm just saying he could be a human for all we know. Some dude who heard the fight and came to watch. But you know you have to go see Deacon, so do that already."
"She's right," Rachel said.
"I know she is," I said, even though I was still convinced that my little sister was playing coy. "Fine. I'm going." I pointed at Rachel. "But I want you two inside. Now. And keep the pub closed today, okay?"
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll keep it closed today, but I'm not keeping it closed forever. For one thing, I was right about Jarel, and I can help you keep an eye out for others like him, and I can do that better if the bar's open—even if just for drinks—and they're coming inside."
"Rachel—"
She held up a hand to stop me. "For another, if the world doesn't come to an end—and it won't—this pub is our livelihood, and I am not going to shut it completely down for four full days. You understand me?"
"Just today," I said. I glanced back at the opposite rooftop, an unreasonable knot of dread twisting in my gut. "Put protections around the apartment and stay safe. Just do that for me, okay?"
She took Rose's hand, then nodded. "We'll clean. Egan's apartment was utter filth, and I've barely made a dent."
"Great," I said, not caring what they did so long as they were inside and safe. "Awesome. Terrific."
"Go," Rose said.
And so I went.
8
The Zakim Bridge is a Boston landmark, partly because it's such a cool bridge and partly because it was part of the whole Big Dig construction project, which made its own headlines because the project was both massive and expensive.
The bridge itself is part of 1-93 and runs over the Charles River, none of which is particularly interesting, but what is cool about it is the way it looks. It's a cable-stayed bridge, which probably means nothing to you unless you're an architect, but if you're looking at it from a distance, the bridge looks like it has two pyramids atop it. Not solid pyramids, but pyramids made of tons and tons of taut metal cable which rise up and attach to eighty-foot concrete towers that jut perpendicularly out of the bridge itself.
It's cool enough that photos of the bridge make up a large percentage of Boston postcards, and, frankly, I think it gives the skyline some much-needed pizzazz.
At any rate, it's big. And although Deacon's dragony demon form was also big, I'll confess that I was hoping to meet up with his much more manageably sized human form. How I was supposed to find one man on an entire bridge, though . . . Well, I really didn't know. Especially since pedestrians are technically not allowed on the bridge. And, honestly, I felt rather grumpy about the whole thing.
Still, I needed to do this, and so I decided to take the boring, methodical approach and walk the damn thing. And, yes, I realized that was not allowed. But I was Über-girl-fighter-chick, and I was in a pissy mood.
Besides, I was wearing a knife and a sword. How much more bad-ass could a girl get?
Not that it's easy to walk the bridge. For one thing, it's raised, which means that unless you want to go all Spider-Man, you have to walk a long way, starting way back from where the freeway is actually on the ground. Do that, though, and the Massachusetts Transit Authority or the Boston police or whoever the heck is in charge will toss you in the back of a black-and-white without even giving you time to blink.
Again, I had the knife, not to mention my surly inner demons, but even so, I wasn't keen on stumbling through the whole Most Wanted routine. Still, I had to find Deacon, so I started out driving, then flipped on the hazard lights about the time I was midway over the Charles River. I lifted my foot from the accelerator, let the car roll to a stop, then killed the engine. And just to make it look good, I slammed my hand down hard on the steering wheel as if I was yet one more pissed-off commuter.
When you break down on the bridge, you're supposed to pull over to the side and wait patiently for help. You're not supposed to get out of the car and start walking.
What can I say? The demons made me do it.
Since this was Boston and it wasn't 3:00 A.M., the traffic was terrible. The infamous late-lunch, early-evening drive-time rush hour. Which meant that I was risking my body (if not my life, what with being immortal and all) by walking on the little strip of asphalt that formed the shoulder. A shoulder that, honestly, did not provide room for a car to stall out. And that, frankly, was a bonus. Because I could hear the screech of brakes and the curse of commuters as they approached my supposedly stalled vehicle, then had to ease one lane over to get around it.
One particularly pissed-off soul rolled down his window, tapped his horn to get my attention, then lifted a fist to me. "Hey, lady!" he roared. "Mooove the fahkin' caaah!"
Man, do I love Boston.
I kept walking, fighting the grin that would surely piss these drivers off more. It probably was the deep, dark demons inside me, but something about mucking up the general flow of traffic gave me a nice little buzz in my belly.
I hadn't seen Deacon when I was driving, and I still didn't see him once I was walking. My general state of mind was alternating between worried and frustrated. With a large smattering of scared thrown in. Scared of what he'd become. Scared that he couldn't come back.
"Hey!" A guy in a battered green Toyota slowed beside me. "Psycho bitch! Get yo' fat ass off the road."
Okay, now, that just ticked me off. For one thing, I no longer had a fat ass. And for another thing, however accurate the psycho-bitch label might be, that was just plain rude.
I didn't pull the sword, but I did push my coat back and rest my hand on the hilt of my knife. "You want to get out of the car and say that to my face?"
Apparently he didn't, as he simply shot me the finger and hit the accelerator. Asshole.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, primarily because what I really wanted to do was curl my palm around my knife. I wanted another fight. I'd had a taste that day, and I wanted more. Needed more.
Human. Demon. I didn't care. I just needed to toss a bone to the dark that was rattling up inside me.
Except I did care. Kill a human, and I would be just like the beasts that writhed within me.
But kill a demon . . .
Then I got that nice, sweet hit of the dark. A thick, oily pleasure so intense it was almost sensual. Demon blood. Demon essence. I was so all over that.
Too bad there was never a demon around when you needed one.
I was bemoaning that little fact when two short siren bursts startled me. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and turned around to find myself face-to-face with an officer on a bike that wasn't nearly as cool as my dearly missed Tiger. I made a mental note to find time in and around the whole saving-the-world thing to swing by my apartment and pick up my bike.
"Officer!" I said, utilizing the full extent of Alice's perky good looks. "I'm so glad you're here. My car broke down, and—"
"There's no pedestrian traffic on the bridge," he said.
"Right. I know. But—"
"Let's get you back to your car, miss."
Since I already knew that Deacon wasn't back that way, I wasn't particularly happy with the officer's backtracking plan. "No, really, I just need—"
"You're holding up traffic, miss." He glanced down at the holster on my thigh and the strap of leather that formed part of the sword's scabbard. "Am I going to have trouble with you?"
I exhaled, because, really, what else could I do? "Yeah, Officer," I said, flexing my fingers as I imagined my knife. "I kind of think you are."
His eyes went wide. Apparently most hooligans don't admit that they're go
ing to be trouble. Fortunately for my officer friend, I realized that I didn't have to gut the poor guy in order to get my way. As part of my handy-dandy demon-sponge persona, I'd absorbed a whole array of demonesque attributes. Bloodlust, for example.
Get me around the scent of human blood, and I become absolutely ravenous. And not for french fries and a milk shake, either. I'd learned to control it—to a point—but I still wasn't thrilled about having such crazy nosferatu tendencies. I wasn't crazy about any of these traits, actually, as each and every one tainted my soul.
I might not be a demon yet, but I was no longer fully human. Instead, I was one of a kind, and while I'm all for individuality, trust me when I say that in some circumstances, it sucks.
Still, if you've got it, you might as well use it. And one thing I had was a way to sexually enthrall men. A perk derived from killing an incubus and one that I intended to utilize on my friend the traffic cop.
"Put your hands where I can see them," he said, shifting his stance so that his legs were shoulder width apart, and his hand was on his gun.
"Sure," I said, breathing low, my eyes on his face, as I tried to dredge up my inner sex kitten. I have all these traits, but they haven't been part of me for long, and I was still learning how to control and compartmentalize all the swill whirling around inside me.
I lifted my hands, palms out and fingers spread wide. My thumbs rested just beside my breasts, and I let a slow, sensual smile ease across my face. "Like this?"
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Higher," he said, not yet as glassy-eyed as I wanted him. I drew in a slow breath, which had the effect of both centering my power and lifting my boobs. In my old, flat-chested body, that would not be a big thing, literally. Alice, however, had an ample rack, and I was more than happy to use it.
I focused again on his eyes and slowly moved my hands, taking one step forward as I did. I suppose I was technically lifting my hands, but I sure wasn't doing what he asked, because I pressed them softly to his shoulders. He didn't protest, and his eyes now had that glassy lust-filled look. I bit back a smile, the essence inside me preening in satisfaction.