by Julie Kenner
Easier said than done, though. The instant I’d slammed my fist against the demon, he’d released my hair, shifting his hold to around my waist and pulling me tight against him. Now he squeezed tighter. I gasped for breath, at the same time bringing my chin down to protect my vulnerable neck.
Apparently the demon wasn’t dead set on seeing my blood spill from my veins. Any old death would be all right with him, and he caught my head in the crook of his arm. Having used that same maneuver, I knew what he was planning, and I didn’t much like it. Get my head in a tight hold, twist, and voilà—one dead Demon Hunter.
Once again, a less-than-ideal outcome for me, and I was already fighting against it. I’d kicked out and around, slamming the heel of my shoe against his tender shin bone, then hooking my leg around his and tugging. The demon stumbled backwards and we both fell to the ground.
I gasped, the wind knocked out of me, and in that moment, Watson scrambled to right himself. He settled on top of me, his knife still clutched in his hand and my arms pinned uselessly to my sides, held tight by the demon’s legs.
“Playtime is over, Hunter.”
I strained against his hold on me, but it wasn’t any use. My kicks met no resistance, and my arms were held fast. My blood pounded in my ears as his knife arced through the air. I was helpless, prayer my last and only defense.
The blade glinted in the moonlight as the point approached my breastbone. I sucked in air, instinctively pressing my back into the ground, trying to gain precious millimeters before the blade plunged into my heart.
I didn’t want to die. But right then, I feared I wasn’t going to be given much choice in the matter.
Time altered, the world moving at a painfully slow pace. The blade made contact with my shirt and continued down, the pain from the impact radiating out like a red stain. My life didn’t flash before me, but my children’s lives did. Hot tears flooded my eyes, and I cursed God for taking away my life. For letting evil get a foothold.
My scream was joined by a deep, guttural howl, and I realized two things at once: the pressure on my body had decreased, and something large and gray was attached to the demon’s head.
Kabit.
I took advantage of the demon’s distraction and burst upright, tugging my hand free and landing a solid punch under the beast’s chin at the same time that I pulled my knees to my chest and then kicked up into his gut. His mouth snapped shut, cutting off the howl, and he fell backwards.
My brilliantly clever cat let out an earsplitting yeeeoooowwwwl and bounded away, digging his claws into the soft flesh of the demon’s face and earning himself a month of tuna in the process.
The fact that Kabit was lazy, fat, and old—most definitely not an attack cat—didn’t trouble me much. I take my miracles as they come, and this one had come in the nick of time.
As the demon swiped at his face, I leaped to my feet, looking around wildly for my knife or anything I could use as a weapon. I found one of Timmy’s plastic shovels and lunged for it, breaking off the end so that when I stood upright, I was wielding a red plastic handle with a nasty sharp end. The kind of thing a child could put an eye out with. Or, for that matter, a Demon Hunter.
I considered throwing it, but ruled that out. I might be confident about the aerodynamic qualities of my own familiar knife. A plastic toy, not so much. The only way I could ensure a clean kill was to nail the bastard through the eye, up close and personal.
Not being a fool, the demon had turned and was now racing toward our back gate, weaving to avoid the plastic Tonka trucks and toddler garden tools that littered our yard. Not being hindered by such obstacles—I’m a pro at navigating around piles of LEGOs and miscellaneous Thomas the Tank pieces while carrying a hot roast and ordering children to wash up for dinner—I easily caught up to the beast.
I tackled him, knocking him off balance as he stumbled over the dinosaur sandbox that I’d left open. He landed with a thud, and I was right there on top of him in an instant, the plastic pressed against his eye. The slightest bit of upward movement, and this would be all over.
“Who sent you?” Sammy Watson was newly made; if he was going out of his way to attack me, it was on the orders of a demon higher up the food chain. “And what is the Sword of Heaven?” I demanded, having called upon my limited Latin resources to translate the blade’s name.
“He comes again to face you,” Watson replied, his voice almost singsong. “His wrath will multiply.”
“Who?” I pressed. “Who is coming?”
The demon sneered. “He who seeks revenge. Who was thrust into cardinal fire. He will find his vengeance. And when vengeance combines with revenge, you and yours will die and hell on earth shall reign.”
As that sounded like a less-than-ideal outcome, I pressed for more specifics.
His mouth split into a charming smile, complete with perfect teeth and twinkling eyes. Honestly, he must have made a killing as a bartender. “Secret,” he said. “Can’t share a secret.”
“I’ve made demons tougher than you give up a few secrets, ” I said. “That’s the beautiful thing about you bastards invading a human body. You get to experience all those lovely side benefits. Like excruciating pain.”
“Do you wish for me to scream, Hunter?” he said, his words bold even though his eyes suggested that he was less than thrilled about my plan to torture the truth out of him. “Perhaps you desire your family to witness my demise.”
“Perhaps I desire you to shut up until I’m ready for you to talk,” I countered. I took my left hand off his throat barely long enough to snatch the ball out of the dinosaur and shove it into his mouth. My plan was to bind his hands and feet, then drag him behind the storage shed so that we were out of view of the bedroom window and the back patio. Once hidden, there were all sorts of ways I could make the demon talk, most involving a blade and holy water. And I did intend to get him talking. Clearly new trouble was brewing in San Diablo—and I needed all the information I could extract.
Carefully, I eased my weight off him, keeping my makeshift dagger at his eye. With my free hand, I grabbed one of his wrists and pulled it toward his back.
“Stand,” I ordered, even as I eased to one side so that I could grab the knife that had fallen near him. I slid the eight-inch blade into the waistband of my jeans, then pushed him upright and edged behind him as he gained height. “Other hand,” I said, “or this is over before it begins.”
I held my breath, not knowing what he would do. If his orders were to kill me, he’d comply, waiting for the opportunity to try again. Otherwise, he might very well ignore my demands, knowing full well I’d shove my spike through his eye, releasing him back to the ether.
He eased his other hand around to his back, and I exhaled in victory. My original assessment was right—this was an assassination attempt, and he was going to cling to this form until I killed him, or until he killed me first.
“Walk,” I said. I was close behind him, my left hand pressing against his crossed wrists, just below his shoulder blades. Since my right hand still held the stake against his eye, our progress was slow. But he moved, and I was willing to take this one step at a time.
After four small steps, he stopped. “Move,” I insisted, but he just shook his head. “Now. Or I put a hole in that eye the size of California.”
I heard a muffled word as the demon tried to respond from behind the ball I’d shoved in his mouth. “Dammit,” I muttered. Whatever secrets this demon had would go unspoken until I removed the gag. But at the moment, freeing his mouth meant letting go of his arms or moving the spike away from his eye. Neither a desirable option.
So I punted. “Shut up and move,” I insisted. “Once you’re tied up all nice and cozy, you can talk all you want.”
I shoved his wrists upward and felt the demon cringe in response to the pain that had to be shooting up his arms. Still, though, he didn’t move other than to kick out, sending a spray of gravel shooting forward in the same direction from which I hear
d a familiar squeal of alarm.
Instinctively, I looked that way, then stiffened, terrorized by what I saw in the dim light of the moon—Allie, struggling against a demon who held her from behind, pinning her arms down at her sides. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, as the cold hand of fear caught me around the heart and squeezed.
Two
Allie. I hesitated only a split second, but that was enough. The demon took the advantage, slamming its head back into my forehead, then dropping down. I dropped with it, then rolled clear, my concern no longer extracting information, but getting to my daughter. My demon, however, wasn’t letting me go to her. It grabbed my legs and pulled me back.
I tucked in my legs and thrust out, managing to catch him in the gut as he was climbing to his feet. I glanced back over my shoulder, and the fear on Allie’s face—not to mention her useless attempts to break free—bolstered me.
From my position on the ground, I propped myself up on one hand, kicked out a leg, and swung it into a crescent. I caught the demon midshin, sending him toppling. In seconds, I was on him, Timmy’s shovel at the ready.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said as I plunged the plastic into his eye. “Better luck next time.”
I turned to race back to Allie, pulling the demon’s knife out as I sprinted toward my daughter. The demon holding her didn’t appear to have a weapon, and for that I was grateful. But Allie had been training diligently for the last two months, and I knew that if the creature had managed to get her in a stranglehold, he’d not only caught her by surprise, he was pretty damn strong.
He looked it, actually. Dressed like a ninja, he was clothed in black from head to foot. Even his face was covered, with slits only for his deep-set eyes, eerie in the weak moonlight.
I considered my options as I ran, not even conscious of what I was doing. I wanted to tackle them both, knocking Allie free and leaving me alone to pummel the demon. Normally I’d need a backup plan, as demons tend not to leave themselves open for direct attacks. This beast, however, seemed willing to do exactly that.
I kept expecting a change in his position. An arm moving to catch Allie around her neck. A knife displayed out of nowhere. Even a low voice sprouting some incoherent prophecy about swords and Hunters and the end of life as we know it.
I got none of that. Just my daughter looking scared and the demon looking . . . well, looking blank.
I lunged, then slammed the demon’s blade straight into his buddy’s eyeball, noting with some alarm how easily the blade went in, as if through nothing more substantial than pudding. With my other arm, I grabbed Allie by the shoulders and pulled her roughly out of the beast’s grasp. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she said as she crouched to one side.
I left the knife lodged in his eye, then leaped back, breathing hard and anticipating that little shimmer of demonic essence as the body sagged to the ground.
Too bad for me it didn’t work that way.
Instead, jamming a sharp piece of metal through its eye only seemed to piss the creature off, a conclusion I very cleverly reached when it rushed me, arms outstretched, and then barreled right into me, toppling me over and grabbing me around the neck.
Beside me, Allie screamed, and I saw her clap her hand over her mouth and cast a quick glance back toward our still thankfully darkened house. Then she raced toward me even as I was scrabbling to grab hold of the knife still protruding from the zombie’s eye.
That’s what it was, of course—explaining the vacant expression, the fact that it survived a poke in the eye, and the oozy, decaying face. Frankly, it also explained the costume, because a rotting body can’t wander the streets of suburbia without being noticed. Not even in California.
The zombie verdict also explained the lack of fight until I’d come near to taking it out. Zombies are controlled by a master. Once the master’s out of commission, they exist in a pretty much mindless state, clinging fast to their last order, but not sure what they should do next, much less why they should do it.
Attack them, though, and they fight back. Self-preservation is a strong response all across the universe.
This zombie had no deficiencies in that area, either. He was determined not only to survive, but to make sure that his attacker didn’t. Since that role fell on my shoulders, I was the one he was currently choking, the dead, cold flesh of his fingers tightening around my throat.
Have I mentioned that zombies are preternaturally strong? Even more so than demons in human form?
A rather inconvenient factoid under the circumstances, and I fought to stay conscious, willing my fingers to close around the handle of the knife. I tugged the blade out of his eye, realizing as I did that the pressure around my neck had decreased. Allie had jumped on her attacker from behind and was now jerking and yanking and kicking, all in an effort to get him off me.
It worked, too, because the creature lost his balance, his fingers loosening enough for me to break free. “Stand back,” I said as I climbed to my feet. She did as I asked, and as the creature lunged for me once again, I caught it in the chest with a solid round kick, sending it toppling to the ground.
I didn’t wait for it to react. I jumped on it, my knees on either side of its hips. And as its arms thrust up, trying to grab me, I plunged the knife down and through its abdomen, the eight-inch blade cutting easily through the soft flesh to lodge firmly in the gravel and hard-packed dirt of our yard.
The zombie flailed arms and legs, then grabbed for the knife.
“Dammit,” I said, smacking his arms away. “Stop that.”
It blinked stupidly, completely uninterested in minding. Beside me, Allie bounced up and down, all the while making little grunting noises.
“Are you okay?” I asked, shifting my position so that my feet were on one zombie hand and my own hands were holding down his other. He was strong, yes, but not unbeatable. And without leverage, he was going to have a hard time regaining the upper hand.
She nodded. “Yeah. Sure. No problem.” She leaned closer, trying to get a look at the thing in the dark. “But shouldn’t you cut off that arm or something?”
Exactly the response I didn’t expect. “Excuse me?” I blurted.
“He’s a zombie, right? So you kill ’em by cutting off their heads and arms and stuff, don’t you?”
I squinted at her, bouncing a little as the zombie fought to get his limbs free. I smacked a flailing arm back down and readjusted my position. “Have you been in the attic? I thought we agreed you’d only read what I assigned or approved.”
“I have,” she said, standing taller and looking downright offended. “I totally swear.”
“Then how—”
“Come on, Mom. It’s not like I never watch cable.”
“Cable?” I repeated, wondering what exactly they were airing on the Discovery Channel these days.
“Movies, Mom,” she said, in such an exasperated tone that I had to assume she’d read my mind.
“Right. Of course.” I considered for a second, quickly finding the flaw in her little speech. “Alison Crowe, you know perfectly well you aren’t allowed to watch R-rated movies that Stuart or I haven’t signed off on.”
“Oh, come on! It’s not like the movies are scarier than my life.”
She had a point. I had absolutely no intention of letting her know that, but silently I had to admit that she had a point.
“Rules are rules, Allie.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Whatever.”
“Allie . . .”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, trying again.
“Better.”
“So would you like to tell me when you’ve seen all of these zombie movies?”
“Um, Mom? Is this really the time?”
I indicated the zombie, more or less immobile beneath me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She hesitated, probably deciding if she should press the point. I put on my sternest mom face, though, and she relented.
“Bethany’s,” she said. “But I don’t thi
nk they were R. Honest. She’s got the Monster Channel in HD, which is totally cool, except that a lot of the movies are pretty lame.” She frowned at the zombie. “For that matter, he’s kinda lame.”
“Trust me. We got lucky. These suckers are stronger than they look. You end up trapped in a cave with a hundred of these creatures, and they won’t seem lame at all. Completely lacking in personality and pretty damn quiet, but not lame.”
That seemed to sober her up. “So what do we do with him?”
I sighed. “Exactly what you said. Cut off their limbs.”
“Cool!”
“I’ll do it.” R-rated life or not, I wasn’t going to have my daughter dismember corpses, of either the totally dead or the living dead variety.
“Can I watch?”
I shook my head, wondering what had happened to my little girl who liked to put on ballerina tutus, flit around the living room, and insist that her life’s blood was oozing out of her if she so much as stubbed a toe during her evening performance. Apparently she’d grown up. And gotten considerably less squeamish in the process.
“You can find me something more efficient to cut with,” I said. “And fast.”
She looked from me to the struggling zombie and then back to me again. “Right,” she said with a firm nod. “Be right back.” She hurried for the storage shed. Once upon a time, we’d kept it locked. Lately, though, we hadn’t bothered. It’s filled to the brim with stuff that we have no room for in the house. I’ve pretty much decided that if the thieves want to haul it away in the dead of night, they can have it.
Of course, if thieves can get in, so can other species of bad guys. “Allie!” I called out, suddenly fearful.
She turned, the door now wide open and my daughter unmolested. I exhaled in relief. “What?” she said.
“Nothing. Just . . . just thank you.”