by Jes Battis
His voice was cut off suddenly by the high-pitched buzz of the Stryker saw. Dr. Rashid plunged the spinning blade of the saw into the demon’s naked scalp, using both of his hands to push it forward.
The demon screamed.
Blood hit Rashid’s face, but he didn’t even try to shield his eyes. He just kept cutting. The blade whined and groaned as it cut deeper, through flesh and muscle and into bone. It was designed to remove the calvarium of the skull to expose the brain, and it worked on demons as well as humans.
I didn’t have much time. Keeping a firm grip on my athame, I ran toward the demon, channeling my last reserve of power as I did so. I felt the pins and needles rushing up my arm. This was an old trick that my teacher, Meredith Silver, had taught me long ago. She called it “the Houdini.”
I let the power flow along the hilt of the athame, skimming along the surface of the earth node to boost my own reserves. The blade grew hot. I concentrated, and the double-edged knife began to tremble. Then it grew, elongating into a saber that gleamed as I raised it above my head.
The demon managed to turn around, and Rashid’s electric saw cut a deep gouge across its face. It opened its mouth to scream something at me, but I kept moving. I used all of my momentum to drive the blade straight down, through its chest.
It choked, lunging for me. But Rashid kept the Stryker saw on its face, and the blade whined as it continued to shear through the muscle tissue. I pushed downward with all of my strength. I heard a sucking noise, and then a crunch, as the blade passed through the demon’s rib cage.
Demonic anatomy could be idiosyncratic, so I was relieved that I’d chosen the right angle. Blood welled up within the wound, running down the surface of the blade. I wrapped both of my hands around the hilt for leverage. The demon howled something at me, possibly in its native language.
“Sorry,” I grunted. “I don’t speak asshole.”
Then I pushed down on the hilt with all of my might, using it as a fulcrum, which drove the blade upward in an arc. I felt it meet resistance as it passed through clusters of organs, some of which probably had no human equivalents. I gave the hilt one last push for good measure.
I was smart enough to shield my face, but hot blood still spattered my arms and chest, making my skin crawl. I was going to have to take six showers to get rid of the demonic funk. Maybe I’d bathe in tomato juice as well, just to be sure.
The demon kept screaming something, but its throat was ruined, so it all came out as a bubbling hiss. Blood seeped from its open mouth.
Miles had regained his footing now. He was rubbing his throat, but seemed fine. I grabbed his arm.
“Get the time bomb from Derrick’s pocket. Now.”
He nodded, then ran over to where Derrick was lying. I was impressed by his level of professional detachment. He didn’t even look twice at the body of his lover, unconscious on the floor. He rifled through his pockets, found the globe, and returned to my side.
“Now what?”
Still gripping the athame with both hands, I gave it a sharp tug. The blade slid out of the demon’s body. More blood came with it. I knew I should have worn a slicker.
I took the time bomb from him.
“Run. Grab Derrick and drag him out of the blast radius.”
I kept a feverish grip on the globe as I turned and ran. I didn’t allow myself to look back. I prayed that it would take the demon a few more seconds to regenerate, especially with the considerable damage that I’d done to its body.
My legs were shaking as I reached Lucian’s side. He reached out to steady me. I must have had a truly insane look on my face, because he grabbed me lightly by the shoulders, looking into my eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Just be ready to run,” I told him. I looked up. The demon had taken a step forward, but it was still bleeding heavily. The front of its chest was slowly coming back together, the tendrils of flesh reknitting themselves with astonishing speed.
Dr. Rashid was kneeling beside Derrick’s body, checking his vitals. The three of them had moved to a safe distance.
I looked at the time bomb one last time. It really did look just like a snow globe. But I trusted Linus.
I hurled it at the ground in front of the demon.
The glass shattered. White light enveloped the demon’s form, and I felt a tremor pass through the air. Everything seemed to go a shade darker. The demon’s writhing movements slowed, then ceased altogether.
It was frozen.
I stared at the cone of white light that was bathing the demon. Drops of blood hovered motionless within it, frozen in perfect meniscus. The demon’s mouth remained open. Its eyes blazed.
Something exploded behind me.
I turned and saw the remnants of the door to the autopsy suite, now scattered in charred bits across the ground. Selena emerged through the ruined doorway, accompanied by two OSI agents dressed in protective gear.
“You’re late,” I told her. “You missed everything.”
My bravado was already crumbling, though. I couldn’t take my eyes off Derrick’s still form. Selena saw the direction of my gaze.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get him patched up.”
“What about the pureblood?”
“We have the technology to contain him. We’ll be able to question him later, under controlled conditions.”
The two agents had already surrounded the frozen demon and were weaving a complex field of infrared light with their athames.
I walked shakily over to Miles and Dr. Rashid. The coroner saw the expression on my face and cleared his throat.
“Your friend has a broken arm. Possibly a few broken ribs, and a concussion. But he’s stable. I believe he’ll recover completely.”
“I thought you normally dealt with dead bodies, not live ones.”
“I’ve dealt with a lot of things in my career.” He blinked. “This is new, though. In fact, I’m not exactly sure what—” He blinked. “I mean, I don’t know—What am I supposed to think about—”
He gestured wordlessly to the four-legged demon, still locked in midscream.
Suddenly, a small gray form appeared at his side. The demon-boy looked up at him. Rashid looked down at the boy. He had an expression of almost childlike wonder on his face.
“What exactly are you?” he asked softly.
The boy smiled. Then he reached up on tiptoes, as if to whisper something in the doctor’s ear. Rashid leaned down, and the boy placed a hand on his cheek.
“Good night,” he said simply.
Rashid stared at him, confused for a moment.
Then he dropped to the floor, unconscious.
The boy turned to me. “He won’t remember any of this. I’ve damaged the specific neuronal clusters associated with this incident. He should wake up with a headache, but that’s all.”
“Nice trick,” I said. “Want to come with us now?”
I held out my hand.
The boy looked solemnly at me for a moment. His eyes were the color of two peacock green marbles that I used to have as a child.
Then he took my hand. His skin was cool to the touch. His horns were gone, and he resembled a blond boy once again, face streaked with dirt, naked, shivering, and hopelessly small.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said.
I led him over to Selena. “Don’t worry. That’s kind of our specialty.”
4
“Have you ever tried hot chocolate?”
The boy gave Selena a skeptical look as she held out the foam cup. He shook his head slowly.
“Try it. Our machine makes it pretty good. It’s not fancy, but it’ll warm you up.”
“I’m ectothermic. I can regulate my own body temperature.”
“Try it anyway.”
He took the cup. “It smells strange.”
“You’ll like it. Trust me.”
He took a sip of the hot liquid. He swallowed, then licked his lips. “You’re right. I
do like it.” He drained the cup. “Do you have any more?”
“Sure. Follow me.”
Selena led him to the coffee machine. He stared at it in fascination.
“It makes hot beverages,” she said.
“How does it work?”
“See the buttons with the numbers? Press B and then four.”
He did so. His eyes widened as the machine began to hiss and burble. Another foam cup dropped into the slot at the bottom, and he actually stepped back in surprise. “Where did it come from?”
“There’s a stack of them inside the machine.”
“Oh,” he murmured.
The machine gave a final loud bubbling noise, and then a stream of hot chocolate poured into the cup. The boy’s eyes never left it. When it was done, he just stood there, uncertain what to do next.
“Reach in and take it,” Selena said. “It won’t bite.”
Slowly, as if reaching into the mouth of a tiger, he withdrew the foam cup. He sniffed it once again. Then he smiled and began to drink, this time more slowly.
“We don’t have this where I come from,” he said.
“Oh? And where’s that?”
“I’m not sure what you would call it. In my language, it’s called Ptah’l, which means Red Island. It’s a small plane bordering several larger ones in a dimension adjacent to your own.”
Selena had managed to find some clothes for him, but they were ill-fitting. As a consequence, he resembled a tween skater. She’d tried to convince him to wear shoes, but he preferred to go barefoot. His feet were small and white against the linoleum floor.
So far, we hadn’t left the lobby of the forensics lab. He seemed most comfortable in the oversized leather chairs, and it wasn’t the right moment to drag him into an interrogation chamber. Eventually, he’d have to submit to a full round of medical tests. But for now, Selena was working on him slowly. She had a surprisingly gentle touch with kids. Even if this “kid” only looked like one.
“You know,” I said, sitting near him but not quite next to him, “you still haven’t told me your name. You know my boss, Selena. And I’m Tess.”
“My name is a combination of liquid and plosive sounds that you wouldn’t be able to replicate with your larynx,” he informed us, still sipping his hot chocolate. “But if you want, you can call me Ru. That’s the closest approximation.”
“Where did you learn our language, Ru?”
“Primary school.”
Huh.
“Can you tell us how you got here?”
“I don’t remember. I was running from them, and then I was just here.” He grimaced. “There was pain, and dark, and sand in my mouth. Then just dark.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
He set down his cup, but made no reply.
“Do you mean the demon who came after you?” Selena pressed.
“No. He’s one of the Kentauroi. A sentry. He was sent to recover me.”
“Do the Kentauroi have any abilities that we haven’t seen yet?” I asked. “Anything we should know about?”
Ru seemed to ponder this for a moment. “Well, there’s the tissue regeneration. And the combustible fibrous appendages. Also, I believe that they’re allergic to some microgametocytes.”
Selena frowned. “You mean pollen?”
“Particularly Asteraceae ambrosia. I believe the vernacular term is . . . ragweed?”
I smiled. “There’s a whole clump of it growing in the north parking lot. Maybe we should bring him back a nice bouquet.”
“It’s only an irritant,” Ru said. “A distraction, at best. You’ll have to keep a close watch on him, if you intend to hold him in this place. Are you using some manner of harmonic field that relies on weak nuclear energy?”
It was a little strange to answer these types of questions from someone who resembled a nine-year-old. But he seemed to value honesty.
“We’re using something similar to what you describe, yes,” Selena said.
“You may want to employ a green crystalline laser for diffraction purposes, then. If you don’t disperse the valences as widely as possible, he’ll sense any weak spots right away.” Ru held up his empty cup. “May I use the chocolate machine again?”
“Of course.”
He walked over to the corner of the room with his cup.
“What’s our next move?”
“We need to get more information out of him. If we can figure out what’s hunting him, we might be able to prepare an adequate defense.”
“I’m a little confused, though, about our role in this investigation. As far as I can tell, there’s no crime apparent.”
Selena stared at me. “Are you suggesting that we just let him go?”
“Of course not. But he says he doesn’t remember anything. And I’m not even sure that we can hold him. Sure, he’s discovered the wonders of the vending machine, and that’s captivating him for now. But what happens when he gets bored, or restless? The kid can spit acid. It’s going to be difficult to keep him here against his will.”
“All we can do is convince him that this is the safest place to stay.”
“Do you even believe that? I mean, okay, the lab’s pretty secure. It’s better than leaving him on the doorstep of the VPD. But what happens when ‘they’ send another bounty hunter to collect him? Maybe the next demon will be able to walk through walls or burn the whole place to the ground.”
“You’re not usually this alarmist,” Selena said. “Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”
I sighed. “No. I never get enough sleep. But that’s not the issue. I just keep thinking about three years ago, when we told Mia that we’d be able to keep her safe. We couldn’t even protect her from one psychotic agent.”
“Who’s Mia?”
Ru was standing behind us, holding another steaming cup of hot chocolate.
“How much of that did you hear?” Selena asked.
“All of it. I can hear conversations on the floor below us, as well. And the floor below that. Your species tends to yell a lot.”
I nodded. “It’s a habit.”
“Who’s Mia?” he repeated.
“She’s a girl that lives with me. I adopted her a few years ago.”
“Is she a demon?”
I frowned. “Technically.”
“I don’t understand.”
I gave Selena a look.
She shrugged.
I turned back to Ru. “Mia was infected with a vampiric retrovirus. She takes medication to suppress the plasmids in her blood, but we can’t eliminate them. She also has the genetic potential to manipulate materia, just like Selena and I.”
“Why would you want to suppress the virus?”
“Well—because she doesn’t want to be a vampire.”
“Did she tell you that herself?”
I hesitated. “Not in so many words, no. But she was infected at an early age. If we’d let the virus run its course, there was a good chance that she’d be hurt, or killed, or that she’d hurt someone else.”
“But vampirism would also make her stronger and give her more acute senses. It would eliminate any further genetic deficiencies in her body and lengthen her life span, perhaps indefinitely. Why wouldn’t she want that?”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to drink human blood,” Selena said.
“She wouldn’t have to. Synthetic blood is bottled and sold in nearly every world, including my own. Some vampires also choose to subsist on animal blood.” His green eyes surveyed me coolly. “It seems as though you took the decision away from her. That hardly seems fair.”
“That’s true. But—” I found myself groping. How could I explain to a pureblood demon that humans valued their own humanity? Maybe we overvalued it. But it seemed a lot better than the alternative. “Maybe she’d prefer to live a normal life.”
“If she has demonic viral agents in her bloodstream, she isn’t living a normal life. Just as neither of you two are living a normal life, by virtue of the ge
netic anomaly that allows you to manipulate your world’s natural forces. What you call ‘materia.’ ” He shrugged. “It just seems illogical to deny her the choice.”
“But you never had the same choice,” Selena said. “You were born pureblood. You’ve never known anything different.”
“But I’ve thought about it,” he said. “I may not be able to change what I am, but I still think about it. Perhaps that’s worse.”
I stared at him. Who exactly was this boy-shaped demon, sipping his third cup of hot chocolate in front of me?
“When the police found you,” Selena said, “you appeared to have no vital signs.”
“Like I said—there was dark, and then sand. That’s all I remember.”
“And you still don’t want to talk about what was chasing you?”
“It was bad.”
That was his only response.
“If you’ll consent to it, we’d like to perform a physical exam on you.”
“It’s fine. Take your samples. I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.”
He chuckled suddenly. “That’s what the Ferid used to say. When they were first convincing us to leave our homes. We just want to help.”
“The Ferid?” I asked. “Are those the demons who are after you?”
Ru didn’t answer, but looked at me suddenly instead. “What happened to your friend? The one who was injured?”
“His name is Derrick. He’s in the hospital right now.”
“And his mate?”
I chuckled. “I’m not sure how Miles would feel about being called that. But yes, they’re together. He’s at the hospital as well.”
“And your mate?” His eyes stayed on me.
“I—” I looked at Selena. Her expression was impossible to read. “I’m not sure who you mean.”
He seemed to scan me for a moment. Then he shrugged. “It’s not important. From what I understand, your species doesn’t mate for life.”
I thought about Lucian. How could you mate for life with someone whose power was entirely based on death? I still didn’t even know how old he really was. He’d never told me anything about past partners. I felt strangely cheated by the lack of information. It’s not as if I wanted him to talk about old lovers. But it would have been nice to have at least some basis for comparison.