“What?” I was so shocked I didn’t even care that I sounded like a strangled chicken.
“The Rocenz is somewhere in that rubble. We can give you the time you need to find it. And I am concerned about the kloricht receiving reinforcements. We know a human had to call this group. Nothing and no one but you can stop them from repeating the summons.”
“They could be in an entirely different city, you know that!”
“I think not. In fact, to call demons from a canal, I believe our human must be very near the spot. Practically standing on top of it, in fact.”
“That’s right, I’d forgotten. But we didn’t see anybody on the way—” Shit. Yousef and Kamal! I wished my guys good luck and sprinted out the door, understanding that their lives depended on me doing my best work tonight.
A second explosion knocked me to the ground. It had begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I stood up and peered back through the new gap in Vayl and Cole’s building where a huge chunk of the wall had blown away. Through it I could see the canal spouting a geyser of bluish orange flames twenty feet high. If I looked harder I could see faces in the flames, screaming in ecstasy as they swam toward freedom. And then, falling from the sky like a net of stars, came Sterling’s reply. As soon as the connected balls of shimmering light hit the fire they exploded, sending my butt back to the ground and my hands over my head. As if my frail little arm bones could really protect me from flying timber.
When I looked again Sterling’s spell had reduced the geyser to a fountain and the faces inside it were screaming.
“Demons closing on your building,” Sterling said, sounding out of breath and slightly gleeful.
“Nice shot,” I heard Vayl say. “How soon can we expect them?”
“Three minutes.”
“Sterling,” I said. “Can you see any other movement in or around the tannery? I’m looking for humans now.”
“So I heard. I’ve got nothing but soul-snorters—wait a minute. Some idiot just came out of the building east of the canal. Dressed like a man. He’s moving toward the rubble. Can you see him?”
“Not from here. Which is a bad spot anyway, considering. I’m changing positions.”
I couldn’t slip around behind the man. There just wasn’t enough room between the rampart wall and the vat for the shadows to hide me. So I moved past him on the north side, crouching low enough for a long line of hide-covered tanks to disguise my scuttling outline. I ended up in front of the building he’d just left. I still couldn’t see him. But I caught sight of the kloricht and Kyphas, moving quickly from vat to vat, closing in on Cole and Vayl like a fatal disease. And the worst part? We’d been right. They’d had two extra guards, maybe standing with the ship they’d sailed in on. But now, with so much at stake, they’d put all their forces into one concentrated attack. Sun Tzu would not approve.
My quarry had to have heard the demons, but he didn’t seem to care. He was bent over the lid’s remains, avoiding random droplets from its fountaining fire, ignoring the howling faces and scrabbling claws of the demon host straining to be free as he searched through the debris. The depth of the alcove partially blocked my view, and I didn’t dare twitch now that the kloricht were close enough to sense my movements. So I tracked Kyphas’s summoner as long as I could, and when he strayed out of view I watched the demons he’d invited into our world.
Though they’d taken basic human forms, they still managed to look comfortable walking on all fours. Probably because it allowed them to jut their chin barbs out as far as physically possible. Their silver mohawks shone in the moonlight as they turned to talk to one another, their whispers sounding like the hiss of steam escaping an overpressured valve.
I opened my mouth to tell Vayl he had company, but Sterling was on the ball. “Okay, you two, visitors entering the ground floor. I count five plus the demoness. You’re standing right in the center of the Hand now. As long as you’re there, you won’t be outnumbered. So stay cool. And I’ll see if I’ve got something up my sleeve that can zap them without frying you guys at the same time.”
“Thank you, Sterling,” said Vayl, his tone nearly as calm as our warlock’s. “We appreciate it.”
I wanted to rush the dude still rifling through the broken lid pieces and bits of building rubble, but I knew I had to wait until the demons were committed. Three minutes later I heard the clash of steel and Cole yelling. My whole upper body twitched against the wall.
“Jaz, don’t move,” said Sterling. “Somebody else just walked into the ruins.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Kamal. In English.
“What do you think?” answered Yousef. Also in English.
What the fu—
“I think you’re never going to keep it without a fight,” said Kamal.
“Come on, then.” I imagined Yousef flicking his fingers toward himself, probably hoping Kamal would beat him badly enough that he’d at least get some fun out of it.
Then I heard the hollow slap of knuckles on flesh.
I spun around the corner, hoping a better view would help me figure out what the hell was going on.
Yousef had Kamal by the shirt collar. He was pounding him so hard that sweat droplets flew off the boy’s face. But Kamal had grown up in the streets, and he’d learned a few tricks of his own. Including the flailing leg move that eventually connects somewhere tender.
Yousef went to one knee. But he didn’t let go. In fact, he buried his fingers in Kamal’s neck. “You little perversion,” he gasped. “The world is going to be a better place without you.”
I snuck in closer, trading my sword for a weapon more appropriate to the moment. But I kept Grief pointed toward the ground, because I was listening to the debate raging in my head.
Yousef is the bad guy! Granny May screeched. He’s clearly bent, or he wouldn’t get such a thrill when you slap him around!
Maybe not! argued Teen Me. Kamal might not be as innocent as he seems. I’m going to date plenty of guys who’ll be perfect gentlemen until they “run out of gas” in the middle of nowhere. And then it’ll be like they’ve gone deaf and grown four extra pairs of hands!
Kamal swung wildly and managed to slam his fist into Yousef’s eye. Suddenly their positions were reversed. Yousef lay on the cracked cobblestones while Kamal straddled him, delivering punishing blows that would’ve knocked out anyone with less resistance. Yousef smiled through the blood and his missing front tooth.
“You hit like my great-grandmother!” he taunted, not even trying to block the blows. One hand crawled up Kamal’s chest, reaching for a choke hold, while the other felt beneath his back. “Ha!” he shouted in triumph as his hand came free, and in his grip he held… the Rocenz.
“Stop!” I yelled as he started to swing. The hammer made it to Kamal’s ear before Yousef managed to halt it. Good thing too, because I was that close to blowing his brains out.
“Get up, Kamal,” I said.
He grabbed the Rocenz and got to his feet, backing away from Yousef, who slowly dragged himself upright, coughing and spitting pink phlegm as he rose.
Kamal murmured something. “What’d you say?” I asked.
“Thanks for saving me.”
I nodded, turned back to Yousef. “You can speak English. What’s that about?”
“Kamal taught me,” he said. “What else is there to do to pass time here every day?”
“But you never told us your secret,” I said.
“No. I like knowing what the ladies say when they think I’m ignorant. It’s like peeking into their diaries.”
“You are such a freak.”
“Yes,” he agreed, holding up a finger to keep me from continuing my train of thought. “But not evil.”
“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t summon the demons that are fighting Cole and Vayl on the roof right now?”
He glanced at the flames full of enraged demonic faces, gnashing their teeth at Sterling’s net, and the expression on
his face sent a chill through me. He pointed at Kamal. “He did it.”
I glanced at Yousef’s young translator. Who seemed sort of… smug.
I watched him flip the Rocenz in his hand, throwing it up high enough so that it did a full 360 before he caught the handle. “What are you doing, Kamal?” I asked carefully.
“Deciding not to spend the rest of my life wading in shit,” he said. “For the longest time I thought I didn’t have any other choice. And then I met the most beautiful woman in the world.” He pointed to the hole the explosion had blown in Cole and Vayl’s building just as Kyphas stepped through it.
“Good boy,” she crooned, giving him such a lusty wink I knew where he thought he was going to be spending the rest of the night. She held her arms out to him.
I swept Grief from Yousef to Kamal and fired. The boy crumpled, screaming as his kneecap shattered. But I was already too late. He’d thrown the Rocenz to Kyphas.
“Your contract,” I reminded her.
“You found the tool,” she told me. “It’s not my fault that you lost it again.” She laughed. “If you ever retrieve it, I’ll be sure to meet you at the gates of hell to help you with Brude’s name-carving party. Until then…” She shrugged. And leaped back into the blackness of the building.
I lunged after her, shooting until my clip was empty. At the same time Yousef ran to Kamal and knelt beside him.
“You stupid, stupid boy. What have I told you about beautiful women?”
Kamal winced. “Let them beat you… but don’t let them break you?”
“Exactly.” Yousef hauled off and punched Kamal one last time, giving him an instant black eye and, at least, a short nap before he’d have to deal with his new reality.
“I have to go,” I said, gesturing to Kyphas’s blood trail, shining like silver in the blackness of the building ahead of me.
“Me as well,” said Yousef. He leaned down, gathered Kamal, and lifted him up onto his shoulder.
I nodded, and we ran in opposite directions. Yousef flapping his sandals as he hustled toward the exit. Me reloading and chambering a round as I trailed the demon up to the roof.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When I skidded through the roof’s open doorway, I felt like I’d entered a video game. I shook my head, forcing away the need to bounce into fantasy. But the sense remained, reinforced by the minefield of gaping holes that allowed me to see straight into the rooms below. Still smoking around the edges, they showed that Sterling had found a way to help Vayl and Cole out after all.
They stood at the opposite end of the roof, shoulder to shoulder, battling the three surviving kloricht. Vayl bled freely from multiple wounds on his chest and shoulders. Cole held his left arm tight to his side. But they both had that determined look that let me know they weren’t even close to giving up.
I wanted to run to them. To mow down anything that dared come against them. Starting with Kyphas. She stood halfway between me and my guys as if waiting for me, her flyssa shining like Death’s fangs. The Rocenz hung at her belt like it was no more than a handyman’s tool.
“Come on, Jasmine,” Kyphas said as she glanced back at the men. “Look what I’ve brought on your pretty boys. Doesn’t it make you furious? Don’t you want to just—kill me?”
Here’s where I should’ve kept my mouth shut and shot her in the face. She would’ve healed eventually. But she wouldn’t have been able to talk. Which meant she couldn’t have needled me into any dumb stunts. But I was more like her than I cared to admit. And I wanted to torture her before I cut her in two.
So I said, “Oh, I’ll destroy you, Kyphas. But Cole’s already done me one better. Because he’s never going to love you. He wants a home. Kids. A future he could never share with a heartless monster who keeps trying to kill his friends.”
“Cole has no idea what he wants,” she replied. “If he did, he’d have it by now. Lucky for him, I do. And I’m going to give it to him.” She patted herself between the breasts, like she was experiencing an actual swelling of feeling for him inside. My instinct was to destroy it before it came out to swallow him. So I squeezed the trigger, nice and easy. Fifteen times.
It’s tough to describe the mess I made of her chest. A team of surgeons would’ve taken hours to dig all the pieces of bone from bloody bits of muscle and organ that I destroyed in a matter of seconds. She didn’t die, but damn did she bleed. And the force of the hits sent her stumbling backward into one of the pits Sterling had opened with his missile shots.
I ran to the edge. She lay flat on her back on the floor of the same depressing apartment I’d paced the length of while watching for her arrival not half a day before.
“Maybe I should stop doing that to my targets,” I murmured. “It never ends well.”
I got the oddest feeling I’d said something prophetic when she sat up and grinned. “Thanks for the assist!” she called. “I couldn’t have done this without you!”
Then she reached into the mass of gore Grief had made of her torso and pulled out—
Holy Christ, is that her heart?
But no, it wasn’t beating. Wasn’t even the right shape. Too smooth, too round. It was a fist-sized, blood-soaked stone. Setting it between her feet, she grabbed the Rocenz and hugged it, anointing it with her own blood as she chanted words I couldn’t hear. Then she looked up at me, her grin so malevolent I felt my skin crawl. With a sound like a cannon shot, the pieces of the Rocenz came apart in her hands, the hammer and chisel shining so bright her skin glowed like a lampshade around them.
She set the chisel to the stone and struck it with the hammer. The sound barely carried to me over what I thought was the last cry of Cole’s enemy. I glanced back. And realized it hadn’t been a kloricht’s death-scream at all. In fact, now Vayl was furiously trying to fend off two attackers. Because Cole had hit his knees. I heard the distant sound of Kyphas sinking another mark into the stone, and Cole yelled again, clutching at his heart as if she’d stuck the chisel straight into his body.
Oh, no. No, no, no! I spun around. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” I screamed to the demon crouching fifteen feet below me.
“Didn’t you know?” she called, her dancing eyes telling me how much she was loving my panic. “The Rocenz does special work in our hands. We can make it transform souls just by chiseling”—chink—“their”—chink—“names”—chink. “You thought you could just drag him around the world, let him play lapdog, beg for your affection while you screwed your vampire every chance you got? You think that didn’t make him just a little crazy? Make him wish he could find a woman who wanted him with her forever?” Chink, chink, chink. “Well, that’s me, baby! Cole will be mine in every way just as soon as I finish his name.”
I glanced over my shoulder. He was lying prone now, looking at me with horror in his reddening eyes. Blood ran down his forehead because—I shook my head, swallowing bile—horns had begun to rip through his skull. He reached out to me.
Vayl, battling for both their lives, could only say, “Run, Jasmine!”
I pointed to Cole, but the motion was more like throwing him an imaginary rope. “I’ll save you. Just… hang on to yourself,” I said. I turned and ran, jumping two entire flights of stairs so I could get to—
No surprise. The door to our stakeout room had been closed. Bolted. Probably reinforced with another demonic seal. The thought of which made me so crazy that I actually slammed my body against it five or six times before the pain of my fruitless attempts brought me back to myself. I imagined I could hear the steady metallic beat of Kyphas’s chisel spelling out Cole’s doom.
What’s happening? screamed Teen Me as she clutched at her hair and ran circles around Granny May.
Shut up and concentrate! Gran replied. Kyphas is turning Cole into a demon. Now think of a way to get us inside quick. Because he would have the shortest name ever.
Even if I’d imagined the chiseling, I wasn’t making up the screams I now heard shooting down from the ro
of. She was close. Goddammit, I wasn’t going to make it!
I could’ve dropped into the room the way Kyphas had, but she’d have expected that. Which meant something trappish would’ve been waiting for me. Think bungee sticks that I wouldn’t have seen until I’d impaled myself. That left the windows. None of which had glass or even bars. In a place like this, why bother? So there was no obstacle to slow me down when I ran into the adjoining room and jumped on the sash of the window that looked out onto the tannery just like Kyphas’s did. Straight drop and a sure hip-dislocation to the stones below. Nothing above but more cavernous holes signifying other glassless windows. Oh, and a single decorative element. A rectangular bar running the length of the building set about six feet above the window. It wasn’t in terrific shape. I could see where parts of the top edge had begun to crumble away. But I had no choice.
So I shucked my boots and turned to face the building. Spreading my feet wide for balance, I gauged the distance and jumped.
I smashed my fingers into the bar on the way up, barking them so badly that I was afraid blood would gush, making handholds so slippery that grip would become impossible. But if I’d cut myself, it wasn’t bad enough to make me fall. I caught the bar just like I had when I was a kid on the playground in elementary school. And again in college when I discovered rock climbing. And yet again when the CIA realized I could be trained to kill killers.
I dug my toes into the outer wall of the building, finding small caves in a surface that looked smooth as glass from the ground. And moved, quickly, quietly, to my left. I’d pulled myself up to the edge of Kyphas’s window when Bergman blew her door off its hinges. The concussion slammed into me, ripping one hand from its anchor and punching me back into the wall of the building.
It’s funny what you recall about people. Granny May always used to say, “You never know what moments are going to stick, so you’d better try to make them all worth the glue.” Yeah, I never quite got her either.
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