by LW Herndon
After retrieving the boy, I straddled the railing and gauged the distance to the floor below. With no better option, I just jumped. A rising chant drew my attention back to the sorcerer’s high platform.
He had come back, probably under the impression he still held the upper hand and the amulet. Yes, definitely a novice. And stupid.
The chant drew the creature’s attention as well.
Head raised, beak clasping the amulet, the creature squinted with new purpose. Harsh, violent wrath rippled in shock waves across the air currents. The head drew back and flipped the amulet into the air. Its maw opened and swallowed. With a pump of its wings, the creature lifted, airborne, in the direction of the platform.
I picked up my pace and breached the door as the sorcerer’s scream pierced the night, followed by a series of crashes. I glanced back. Just once.
Flames engulfed the platform, the walls rent from their frames. The creature stamped back and forth, wings tucked behind its back, the sorcerer’s arm hanging—no, eaten.
I gave my head a quick shake that didn’t dispel the image as I left the building. Repositioning the boy into a fireman’s carry, I cleared the warehouse parking lot with greater speed and didn’t stop until I reached the road. Finally, risking a halt, I set the kid down, wrestled my cell phone from my jeans, and knelt at his side.
Flames burst from the warehouse’s upper windows. The explosions escalated with a bloom of colors as the fire connected with whatever was stored in all the crates on the warehouse floor. Fireworks, from the display of the rainbow flashes and the syncopated whistles and bangs. The smell of gasoline gave a hint, too.
I didn’t bother to search for the creature. With the conjurer and totem both effectively destroyed, it would return back to another dimension.
I flipped the phone shut when the car stopped beside me. “Took you long enough.”
Chaz ignored me and watched the spectacle through the open passenger window. “Quite the Technicolor.”
“No thanks to you. Where the hell have you been?”
“Other priorities,” he responded with a shrug. “I took the scout out.”
I wrestled open the rear door and laid the boy on the seat. My bike I would have to get later, if it survived the incineration.
“Hey, no blood on the seats.”
Not certain if he meant the kid or me, I ignored him and slid into the passenger seat. “It’s the price you pay for being late. Besides, when do you care about a little blood?”
“It’s Corinthian leather.” Chaz sniffed at the backseat. “Is he for entertainment?”
“No, he’s covered under my innocents clause.”
“Not my clause.”
I wiped my remaining silver blade on my jeans, an eyebrow raised at Chaz.
“Fine.” He spat out his window and rolled his eyes. “Now what?”
“Now, you run me by the nearest hospital and give me your jacket.”
“No way—” He broke off as he watched me flip the blade in my hand and wedge it back into my boot. “You’re a son of a bitch,” he added without heat and shrugged out of his leather bomber. “I don’t know why Shalim makes us put up with you. You know he’s going to expect you to come straight in and report.”
“Shalim is going to have to wait until I get this kid fixed up.” I zipped the jacket to cover the tears and blood on what was left of my shirt. “And he tolerates me because I can find these sorcerers who want to bind your eternal hides and destroy you.”
“Whatever.” Chaz pulled the car onto the main road and headed toward the hospital.
“Let him know I’ll be there as soon as I’m finished.”
“You think I want to roast in the eternal flame?” he snapped. “Tell him yourself.”
CHAPTER 3
The critical care unit’s blue shellacked walls reflected the light and intensified the hammering at the base of my skull. The depressing color didn’t help my frustration level either. Four in the morning shouldn’t be so hard on the eyes or the brain. Since there was no help for that, I waited while the numbers of each floor lit in the digital square at eye level and tracked the elevator’s slow progress.
I had admitted the boy in the emergency room. No small feat. A total stranger bringing in a teenager, nearly drained of blood, half dressed, and unconscious usually raised a cry to the police or at least social services.
Fortunately, I had a track record for delivering people off the streets. As bad as that sounds, my typical haul wasn’t kids and rarely extended to anyone unconscious. All points in my favor. The ER administrator was familiar with me, if not outwardly friendly. They would still contact the authorities, but on me, she would reserve judgment until the kid regained consciousness. The state of his mangled wrists earmarked him as a potential suicide. I cringed, picturing him waking up here, alone, frightened out of his mind, and strapped to a bed. Not a circumstance I could control.
My bike successfully retrieved, I had come back to wait for news on his condition. With no documented relationship, the staff refused to give me any updates, much less let me see him.
On the plus side, the sorcerer hadn’t cut the boy’s ankles, like the other boy in the warehouse. The result—a slower bleed-out and a higher promise of survival. Each hour this kid stayed alive pegged another milestone toward his recovery.
With a ding, the elevator doors opened, and I punched the button for the main lobby. Hands stuffed in my pockets, I leaned against the back wall, my eyes blessedly closed. Eons later, the ding for the next floor rang out. With nine more floors to go, I ignored the door’s rattle as it opened and closed. No great hurry, no new occupants, and a modicum of peace. I would take what I could get.
I released a frustrated breath and mulled over the sorcerer’s need for a vessel. Whether from my own muddled fog from the recent events or lack of food or just weariness, I couldn’t puzzle out the logic for his request. Instead of using one of the two captive boys, he’d been intent on draining them to death. Not to mention that he drank only a small portion of their blood.
Answers didn’t materialize out of thin air, which circled me back to my original task for Shalim, pinpointing the Consortium’s location. The job I shared with Chaz.
He had grudgingly taken me back to retrieve my bike after I’d admitted the boy. Then left. Not a word from him on where he’d been all the time I had battled the dragon. His vibration’s higher resonance and the deeper, healthy color of his dark-chocolate human façade clued me in. Where he had found someone to feed on near the docks was the question. Given his preference to feed on the high levels of pleasurable sexual emotions emitted by others, I worried less about victims than his uncharacteristic urge to feed twice today.
The elevator dinged at the fourth floor.
“Such resignation.”
I opened my eyes and held every muscle ready. Another finely tuned defensive skill adapted from clan training. Never offer an opponent an opening.
“You don’t need to look like that,” said the petite brunette in front of me.
“What the hell do you want?” I don’t usually open with rudeness, but I could smell her, though not quite the acerbic, cinder fragrance I’d come to recognize. Her scent held a bit of sweet sandalwood and cinnamon with a strong demon undercurrent beneath the delicate exterior. A surplus of demons everywhere. Humans have no idea how many circulate in civilized society.
I rolled my shoulders and clenched my teeth. Could be worse, a lot worse.
“Hmm, issues. Now is that the way to treat the answer to your problems?” She gave a quick smile that didn’t reach the amber shine of her eyes.
“No problems here.” I forced my best leave-me-the-fuck-alone attitude into the statement. “Not that resolution to my issues is any of your business.”
Stupidly, and knowing better, I gave her a brief once-over.
She was pretty, with mocha skin, glossy shoulder-length curls, and those eyes—intense. Demons in their human shells radiate a potent al
lure. Her form revealed an interesting and subtle mix of understatement and sex appeal. Demons have some control over their appearance in human form, though what usually surfaces is an unbidden display of ego. Hence Chaz’s menacing attempt at a cultured NFL-player façade.
Beneath this demon’s attractive surface, I could detect deadly power. Deep, subtle vibrations of energy and heat combined with her delectable scent: complex, evolved, signaling high skill and strong power. Probably older than God, as well. She carried the seasoned, confident air of a higher demon. More polished than Shalim, definitely, and he qualified for the ten-thousand-year-old register.
Her responding gaze started with my feet and worked its way up to my eyes with a look of interest that would fry eggs. Every inch of my body tingled from her appraisal.
“I’ve heard so much about you, Thaddeus Kane.”
“Don’t call me that.” No one called me by my name, not even Chaz. In fact, aside from various oblique references, I held no one name within my clan, only brief, symbolic references denoting a member of mixed blood. A member undeserving of a name to my demon brothers. Overheard in reference by another demon outside of my clan, my name would cast a large net of suspicion on me and imply a deep association. Trouble I didn’t need. It might not get me killed, but I would wish I were dead, expulsion from the clan being equivalent to death.
“So touchy. Kane, then, blue-eyed boy of demons.” She raised a perfect arched brow.
The elevator doors opened. “How about you don’t call me anything, and we’ll call it even.” I pushed away from the elevator wall to head toward the hospital lobby.
She remained before me, arms crossed with feigned impatience. “So do you have a way to get the boy out of here? Or will he spend the rest of his life trussed up in the psych ward?”
The doors started to slide shut. I shot out an arm over her head and slammed a hand to stay the mechanism. Not making eye contact, I lowered my head beside hers. “You leave the boy out of whatever is on your mind.”
“No.” Her face turned toward me, her breath on my cheek. Whispers of flame flickered across my skin. “I want your help, and I demand a certain level of indebtedness. The boy is in-play.”
“No.”
With a well-placed grip on my jacket, she hauled me back across the elevator into the wall, with more strength than a wrecking crane. The door slid shut. “Let’s clear this up now. I don’t have time to waste. I can get the boy released, legitimately and—” She held up a hand to stop my speech. “I can get him placed in a safe home where he’ll be cared for. Indefinitely.”
I waited. Silence closed in and sucked out the air in the shrinking metal box.
“So what’ll it be?” she said.
“What’s the catch?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek, tilted her head, and assessed me. “I help you with this kid, and you help me find some others.”
“No deal.” I reached around her, hit the Open Door button, and pushed past her. Without interference, I reached my bike in three minutes and jammed the helmet on my head.
She had nothing to offer me, and I didn’t bother looking back.
I wasn’t about to locate kids destined for succubus fodder.
***
I closed the elevator grate to my loft, dropped Chaz’s jacket across one of my mismatched thrift-store chairs, and tossed my helmet onto the couch. It took more effort and time to wipe clean the blood left on my chest from my battle with the dragon, sorcerer, and bleeding kids.
A quick look in the bathroom mirror confirmed the same body I woke up in this morning. I pitched the washcloth into the hamper, scoring two points, and dropped my tattered shirt in the trash. The grumble of my stomach forced my next decision.
Meager didn’t begin to describe the items that had survived in my fridge over the last two weeks. When nothing satisfied my eyes or my stomach, I gave up and rummaged in the cupboard. Armed with canned artichokes, mushrooms, capers, and pasta, I grabbed a sauté pan and flicked on the burner.
“Don’t you think you should hear me out before you discount my offer?”
Fists on either side of the stove, I hung my head, not bothering to look in her direction. “Didn’t take you long. You have an obvious disregard for personal space.”
She snorted in disgust. “I’m being considerably more polite than any of your clan brothers. Why the lack of civility from you, baby boy?” She ran a hand along my counter and glanced at the stove. “I’ve made a very fair request for you to help these innocents.”
“I don’t think helping you find children will keep them innocent for very long.” I grabbed an onion from a basket underneath the counter and cleaved it in half with my knife. “So why do you want them? Let me guess. To feed on their fear, or perhaps they taste like chicken?”
I actually didn’t take her for a flesh demon, but sometimes people spill things when you rile them a bit. Never smart to rile a powerful demon, but I was tired. And hungry. Her presence guaranteed I would rectify neither issue soon.
She tapped a polished nail on the countertop. “Now see, that shows you are being very…biased. Throwing me in with every other demon you’ve met. Trite.” She ran a hand over one section of the recycled glass-and-stone counter, lingering here and there over the color and texture highlights. A sensual, practiced move meant to entice me, not decipher my kitchen’s construction quality. “I have no particular interest in children. Period. Nice surface, by the way.” She glanced around at the loft and then at the bricks piled in the corner. “Doesn’t seem to match the rest of the décor, though.”
I raised an eyebrow at the veiled insult. Just because the woman failed to be impressed with my work in progress didn’t mean it merited her scrutiny or lack of vision. I had carefully removed those bricks from the surrounding walls, to reuse them, exposing pipes and wiring. The result, a wide-open floor plan. Wood-plank flooring covered the kitchen and immediate living room, but stacks of hardwood pallets and construction tools covered the bare concrete floor near the elevator and the remaining space.
I did all the work myself, which meant I didn’t finish the majority of my projects. My entire space consisted of the freshly finished kitchen, a somewhat old and broken-in leather couch I’d rescued from a Hollywood agent who had “gone out of business,” a pitted but clean table, a collection of unmatched chairs, and a few bookcases.
Not fancy, but it was mine. I shared it with no one, especially demons, clan or not. Frankly, I don’t need much. What I have is clean and, where possible, constructed by me. Given her nails, I would be surprised if she could find her way around the proper end of a circular saw, much less replicate any of the work I’d done. Then again, she’d proved she was strong.
She shook her head in disgust, turned back to me, and ran her gaze over my chest down to where my jeans hung on my hips. “You, however, clean up nicely.”
“Why bother?” I asked, trying to get her to focus on something other than my body. The sooner we resolved her issue, the sooner she would leave.
Her eyes widened in mock offense, purposefully misconstruing my comment.
“The kids,” I said firmly as I walked to a hallway closet, dragged out a T-shirt, and headed back to the kitchen. I’m not shy. I just didn’t need female demonic lust as a distraction. Little sensations of her interest already perked along my nerve endings, instigating an inconvenient response. My control is good, but not that good.
“They are being targeted for termination,” she said with a shrug.
“You care for what reason?” I waved the knifepoint at her in a circle before continuing with the onion. “You’ll forgive me if I find a demoness who saves children a bit of a stretch.”
“My motivations aren’t something you need to know.”
I gave her a look and then glanced pointedly at the door.
“Isn’t your interest piqued? Just a little?” She sashayed toward the elevator grate and opened the door. “Too bad.” She made a show of entering the el
evator and then disappeared.
Not able to help it, I gritted my teeth and looked at the ceiling. No help there. No one above ever answered my pleas. With a loud click, I switched off the burner and backed against the refrigerator, arms crossed to wait. “Fine. But you get five minutes, and they started four minutes ago.”
She wafted back into form next to me, slid a hand up my sleeve, and smiled. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
I pushed her jewel-polished nails from my sleeve. “Who is targeting the kids? And why?”
“It’s not one person but several. A rather nasty group, one growing in power.”
“These are human children?”
She hesitated a second and then nodded.
I swallowed back annoyance. I wanted to get the whole story without having to drag it out of her in bits and pieces. “I’m not buying it.”
“Expand your mind a minute. This—” She waved her fingers, seeming to search for a word. “This group thinks removal of the children provides opportunities for their own team’s advancement. They are deadly serious about their goals.”
“Based on what, paranoia?”
She rolled her eyes with a bored look. “More like scripture.”
“The Bible directs someone to kill these children? And demons would give a crap for what reason?” I moved away from her, leaned a hip against the stove, and gave a sad glance at my onion, seeing the opportunity for a meal in my immediate future dissolve.
“These children are special to all of us.”
I said nothing and tapped my finger to my wrist and imaginary watch.
That bought me a scowl, but she continued. “If these children reach the age of twenty-three, they become immortal. Relatively speaking. They begin to echo a signal of their true selves at seventeen. They are at risk from then on until they reach the age of change.”
“That’s a new one.” I turned and filled a pot of water to distract myself while I tried to gauge her honesty level. Given the “no soul” aspect of demons, it’s a little hard to decipher honesty. Evaluation requires a measure of emotion to gauge right and wrong, guilt and innocence. I waited for her next reaction, but she didn’t offer more information. “Immortal relative to what?”