Demon Night

by Meljean Brook

  Charlie blinked; Jake had mimicked the senator’s voice, and Mark shook himself out of his stupor. “What the—”

  Jane let go of Charlie and reached down, tugged on his arm. “I don’t know either, Mark, but I think it’s bad. Come on.”

  Relief swept through Charlie when Mark got to his feet and walked with Jane toward the house. Following Jake’s cue, Charlie moved backward, her guns drawn, watching the senator’s approach. Jake let her go up the porch steps first, but she had to stop when Mark paused in the doorway, looking out over the lawn.

  “Hold on, hold on.” Mark’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “That’s my dad. You don’t have to—”

  “That’s not your dad,” Charlie said, impatience and fear tightening her throat.

  Ethan and Sammael had been backing up with them, but they halted on the pavement as if drawing an invisible line for the senator to cross. Ethan had vanished his wings; he’d told her once that they slowed him down.

  So would a distraction, and his worry that she wasn’t yet protected.

  Charlie turned to Mark and bared her teeth. “Get inside, or I’ll throw you in.”

  Mark paled and opened his mouth, but whatever argument he’d been about to make died. His mouth just remained open. Charlie glanced back at the lawn. The senator held two swords now, and his eyes were glowing red.

  “Go in, Charlie,” Jake said quietly, and she realized that Mark had finally stumbled past the threshold.

  Charlie followed him, then ran to the large window and tore the drapes down. The curtain rod clattered to the floor, then everything went quiet, and she hated it, hated that she couldn’t hear Ethan’s heart beating—that she had to rely on what she could see.

  Jake joined her, and she looked up at him. “Can we help him from in here?”

  Jake nodded. “If you’ve got a good shot, you can take it. Just make certain it won’t hit either of them.”

  “Okay.” She drew in a long breath. “Mark, do you have any guns? Rifles or anything?” Anything that would do more damage than her pistols.

  “Yes.” His strained response came from directly behind her. She glanced back; he was staring out at the lawn, his expression bleak. “What is that thing, and where’s my father?”

  The “thing” was growing, his clothes vanishing. Crimson skin stretched over his muscles, and his wings were so incredibly beautiful…but not.

  Charlie swallowed hard. Ethan and Sammael were circling it now, each taking a different side and splitting its attention.

  “It’s kind of a demon,” she said quietly. She’d have taken Mark’s hand before she said the next part, but she thought her skin might frighten and repulse more than it would comfort him. “It took possession of your father’s body after he died.”

  So fast. She blinked, and suddenly Ethan’s and the nephil’s swords flashed. Then Sammael’s, coming in from behind.

  “Goddammit,” Jake muttered, dropping to his knee and aiming through the window. Their positions changed too quickly for a gun to be useful. Jake was trying to follow them, but he hadn’t yet fired a shot—and Charlie was even slower. She stared, feeling helpless.

  “What do you mean, died? It murdered him?”

  It took her a second to remember what Mark was asking, but she couldn’t take her eyes from Ethan. A stain had begun spreading down his pant leg.

  “No,” she finally said. “Vladimir and Katya did after they withdrew from their agreement with him.”

  “The vampires?” A harsh note slammed into her—hate, anger, grief. “Animals. They shouldn’t be exposed, but slaughtered.”

  “They were. The thing out there went back and killed them.”

  “Good,” Mark said. A moment later, she heard his footsteps retreating from the room.

  Jane made a soft sound as Sammael took a slice across the tip of his wing from the nephil’s blade. Charlie squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t handled any of that very well, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Ethan’s blood was dripping over the lawn, the drive, and he was weakening; so was Sammael. And they couldn’t contact anyone for help—

  Her eyes flew open. “Jane, do you still have Drifter’s old phone?”

  “It’s upstairs,” her sister whispered. Her hands were clenched tightly in front of her. “But the battery’s dead.”

  Jake didn’t look from the window. “Where’s yours, Charlie?”

  “In Drifter’s cache. Maybe Mark—”

  Jake was shaking his head. “It’s still in his car. Drifter knew he had yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Check your holsters, then. He’d have hidden it, so Sammael couldn’t destroy it like he did ours.”

  Charlie blinked, then gave Jane one of her pistols to hold and reached into her right holster. Her eyes widened, and she drew her cell phone out. “No service,” she said, and met Jake’s gaze. “Are you going, or am I?”

  Jake stood and took the phone. “I am. I’ll be in again as soon as I’ve contacted Selah.”

  White feathers and Ethan’s back suddenly blocked their view outside. Exposing himself, slowing himself down. “Go, Jake,” Charlie rasped. “He’s keeping them from seeing what you’re doing.”

  Jake vanished the phone and ran out of the room, toward the rear of the house. She heard more footsteps, but they were Mark’s, coming from the game room. With the rifle, hopefully—Ethan ducked away from the window, his wings vanishing again, and the nephil was there on the porch, just beyond the pane of glass.

  Jane gasped and stumbled back, but Charlie focused on the nephil’s form, took careful aim. It was moving from side to side, easily parrying every thrust of Ethan’s and Sammael’s swords, but maybe unloading a clip into its head would make that just a little more difficult—

  The glass in front of her shattered, and her ears rang painfully. Charlie blinked and staggered forward, stared at the cracks radiating from the neat hole in the center of the window. Blood beaded on the glass like scarlet dew on a spider’s web.

  Her chest hurt. She couldn’t breathe or see. Then the window collapsed, a shining waterfall of broken glass, and everything was clear again.

  Directly in front of her, the nephil had a bullet hole in its side. Pale, human-looking skin surrounded the wound, but it was already healing and turning crimson.

  She looked past it, toward Ethan. His face reflected his horror. Why was she sensing it through the spell?

  She shook her head in confusion. Lowering her gun to her side, she looked down at her chest, and wanted to throw up.

  Oh, God. Her ears were still ringing because Mark’s rifle hadn’t had a silencer.

  The horror she sensed was Jane’s.

  Charlie slowly turned. Mark’s eyes and cheeks were wet. The rifle lay on the floor by his feet. His arm was around Jane’s waist, and he held Charlie’s pistol against Jane’s neck.

  A scream climbed in her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.

  “Slaughter all of you,” Mark said, his voice shaking as hard as the madness and fear in his psychic scent. Shrieking, tumultuous. “And your whores.”

  She tried to respond, but it only brought flavorless blood to her mouth.

  “Charlie,” Jane whispered, pleading, crying, and Charlie’s hand steadied on her gun. She looked at Mark’s forehead. Imagined the hole there.

  Saving Jane from this was going to be so easy.

  CHAPTER 31

  The nephil slowed.

  For only a few seconds, but if it hadn’t, Ethan figured he’d have been dead. Seeing Charlie shot had just about torn him into pieces, and for an instant, his brain had shut down.

  But now it was Sammael who was going to be dead if the demon didn’t stop trying to see what was happening inside the house.

  Ethan didn’t—couldn’t—let himself look. A bullet would hurt Charlie something terrible, but she wouldn’t die. And getting himself killed would hurt her worse.

  The nephil turned his head, and Ethan’s blood r
an cold. It had heard Jake. The kid’s voice was coming from somewhere behind the house, and even slowed, the nephil would take him out as easy as—

  Slowed.

  God Almighty. Something had slowed it down. And maybe the nephil tortured vampires because Vladimir and Katya had killed the human it had been…but then again, maybe it had more reason to bleed out vampires than a grudge.

  Ethan backed away, ignoring the ache in his thigh where he’d been cut deep, and switched his swords for his pistols. This was taking one hell of a risk. Guns would leave him pretty much defenseless, and he already knew bullets alone wouldn’t damage the creature all that much.

  The nephil took a step toward him. The vials filled with vampire blood sat in Ethan’s cache; quick as thought, he pulled them in.

  He dropped the vials in the air halfway between himself and the nephil, and fired. Glass shattered, spraying blood.

  The bullets embedded in the nephil’s chest, and Ethan saw the ripple of pale skin that spread out from the wounds before he had to trade in his guns for his swords.

  And once again, Ethan should have been dead—but he had just enough time to block the nephil’s swing.

  “Sammael,” Ethan said, but the nephil caught his stomach with its taloned foot and he spoke his next words while holding his gut together, pain flaring white-hot through his innards. “You got any vampire blood?”

  Sammael frowned; but a second later, his eyes widened. “And the blood that heals will bring glory, release the dead unto judgment, and the judged unto Grace,” he said, laughing, and Ethan thought the demon was heading for crazy until a crimson tide poured over the nephil. Sammael spun his pistols in his hands once, then started firing.

  Ethan used his sword. The nephil became smaller, and it turned to run, the senator’s form breaking through the red skin. Blood coated Ethan’s blade, and he buried it in the creature’s chest, but it was still moving, still running.

  “How the blazes did you demons imprison the nephilim before?” Ethan yelled.

  “I have no idea!” Sammael called, still laughing and shooting.

  A bullet dug into Ethan’s back, and he gritted his teeth. His sword skewered the nephil’s torso, and Ethan swung it around, using its body as a shield. He’d cut the goddamn heart in two, but it was struggling.

  Son of a bitch. Ethan’s second sword took its head, and it finally fell limp.

  Sammael’s next bullet caught Ethan in the throat.

  His vision darkened around the edges, and he sank to his knees, let the nephil drop to the ground in front of him. Sammael’s smile sharpened, and he exchanged his guns for a sword.

  A growl sounded behind Ethan. Three growls, as familiar to his ears as Hugh Castleford’s voice, as Selah’s softly spoken commands, the beat of feathered wings. Ethan’s chest hollowed in sheer relief. Help had arrived. Too late for the nephil, but not too late for him.

  Sammael froze—but he wasn’t looking at Ethan, the Guardians, or at the hellhound whose massive jaws dripped foam and flecks of blood onto the lawn. The demon launched himself onto the porch instead, threw himself at the empty window, calling Jane’s name. The shield stopped him. He whipped around, his eyes glowing. “Get me through it.”

  Ethan held up his hand for the others to stop, then signed, Watch my back, before staggering to his feet. His throat, his gut were on fire.

  How much time had passed since Charlie had been shot? It felt like minutes, hours…but must have only been seconds. Thirty or forty. He looked through the window and his chest turned to ice.

  A gun against Jane’s throat. Madness in young Brandt’s eyes. Charlie’s choice would be simple, but it was the kind that wouldn’t let her rest easy for a hundred years. Maybe never.

  And he’d rather Fall than see her forced to make it.

  Ethan signed, Someone yell for Jake to come up here. The kid hadn’t returned inside the shield yet—Ethan couldn’t see him, leastwise. He glanced down. His clothes were soaked with blood, riddled with tears and holes; if Charlie smelled it, saw the evidence of his injuries, it could very well push her over the edge before he took her place.

  He signed a request for new clothes from Selah, then turned his attention to the demon. Sammael might try to get in the house when the shield went down; no way in hell was Ethan going to allow Sammael’s tongue to influence anything that Charlie did.

  Fortunately, Sammael was awful distracted by the scene inside. Ethan shot a dart of hellhound venom into him, saw the demon’s surprise, watched him slide to the porch.

  “This ain’t killing you, or even contributing to killing you,” Ethan said, the words sounding torn and wet. “They’ll leave you alive if you just lay.”

  He looked away from the demon, met Selah’s gaze, then Hugh’s. Dismay filled Selah’s psychic scent as if she realized the choice Ethan was about to make, and she stepped forward, but Hugh caught her hand. She closed her eyes, shielded her sudden grief.

  Jake came up onto the porch, his brows lifted high.

  “Just reach in through the door and wipe the blood from the symbols,” Ethan said. “I’ll walk in alone.”

  Easy, but it needed to be precise. She couldn’t make a mistake. Death had to be instantaneous, her aim perfect.

  Ethan had taught her how: focus, exhale, then gently squeeze the trigger.

  It was hard to focus. Jane’s face was pale and terrified. But Charlie forced her gaze away from it, and everything narrowed down to Mark’s forehead.

  Now she had to breathe out and empty her lungs. It wouldn’t be air, but blood. And Mark probably wouldn’t even see the movement of her hand.

  Her exhalation rattled from her chest, her forefinger caressed the trigger. So easy.

  But she didn’t lift the gun.

  It hadn’t been blood. She’d breathed air, and that meant she had another choice.

  Oh, God, she thought, because when it mattered she always fucked up, nothing came out of her mouth like it should; she had a better chance of getting Jane out of this by shooting him than talking. But the words began bubbling up anyway, raw and wet, forcing their way out.

  “Jane,” she rasped, but had to stop and wipe her mouth with her free hand, and ignore the streak of red. Jane’s eyes opened, but Charlie hadn’t been asking for her; it was just where this story began. “Jane was nine when she fell in love with…with…his name starts with a ‘B,’ and he was in that movie where the terrorists take over the skyscraper, and he was just a lone cop against all of the bad guys. And we weren’t supposed to watch it because there was too much violence in it, but we sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night anyway, and then for months Jane’s response to everything was ‘Yippee kai yay, motherfucker.’ Because that’s what the hero said to the bad guy when he killed him.”

  The chaotic, ragged noise that Mark’s psyche had been making didn’t vanish—but it lowered in volume. A steady note of confusion joined the madness, as if Mark was wondering what the hell she was saying…and if she was on her own way to insanity.

  Good, Charlie thought, but she didn’t holster her gun.

  “She never said it in front of my mom and dad—only behind their backs. I did, except I sang it, drawing it out so that they couldn’t tell what it was. I’ll unfortunately never sing ‘motherfucker’ like that again, but let me tell you: It was amazing when I did. Jane could probably give you a demonstration, if she wasn’t laughing so hard—but her contralto is reedy, so it’d sound like crap anyway.”

  Charlie paused for a quick breath. Jane’s lips were pressed tightly together; she was trembling, and there was color in her face. And Mark was looking and his psychic scent sounded a little saner now—if completely bewildered—but his gun was still against Jane’s neck, so it was time to tell him what she’d do if he didn’t lower it soon.

  “I didn’t like the same what’s-his-name actor, though—”

  “Bruce,” Jane said.

  Charlie grinned. “Bruce, yes—because I liked the bad guy better. Unt
il about a year or so ago, I was alone at home watching movies, and I see Bruce in another film, and he’s looking up at this gigantic blue alien, and she’s got this synthesized coloratura soprano, and he’s about to cry because it’s so beautiful. Then the singer gets killed—which isn’t a surprise, because singers always get killed—but then Bruce suddenly turns into this big damn hero and goes after all of the bad guys. And at one point, a bad guy is holding a gun to a good guy’s head. But Bruce just walks into the room, and before the bad guy can react there’s a bullet through his forehead.”

  Mark blinked, and his gaze shifted to Jane, then to Charlie’s pistol. Uncertainty chased away the rest of the madness.

  Charlie wasn’t smiling now. “I’m really, really fast. But I like to think you’re a good man, Mark—and I’ve recently been told that it’s hard to wash a good man’s blood off your hands.” The gun wasn’t so tight against Jane’s neck now, but it still wasn’t enough. “For Jane, I’m willing to scrub. And if you do anything to her, not only will I shoot you like a bad guy, it won’t even matter. Because I’ll heal her with my blood, and if I can’t do that I’ll turn her into a vampire to save her. She won’t like it as much as I do, because her boyfriend probably won’t respect her free will—but she’ll be alive. You won’t be.”

  Mark swallowed hard. Charlie stood motionless, and didn’t look away from him when she heard the front door easing open…and the sudden noise from outside. The tread of boots was unmistakable. Ethan. Oh, God, please please please don’t let his appearance frighten Mark and undo everything she’d just done.

  Mark’s eyes widened, fear erupted from his psyche—and he tossed his pistol to the side. He touched his free hand to his forehead before holding it up in surrender.

  Charlie bent forward a little, her relief so profound it hit her like a fist. She turned her head; Ethan was blinking, his gun aimed at Mark’s head, his brow furrowed. Relief projected sudden and heavy from him, too.