by Ashur Rose
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LILITH
AS SHE MOVED FROM the table, Lilith was nearly knocked down. A man and two women in formal evening wear raced for the front stairs. Their skin was bone pale, their lips and eyes blood red. In an instant, they were gone.
Lilith headed toward the bar. The bartender, a bald, blue-skinned man with a huge beak of a nose, vaulted the bar and ran after the pale patrons. The stocky, bearded guys left their piles of gemstones, retreating fast on stubby legs.
Staggering, the big-boobed waitress in the naughty nurse getup moved through the curtains of the private table. Her arms, neck and left thigh were streaked with blood.
Lilith grabbed her. “What’s going on?”
Unfocused eyes darted toward the exit stairs. “Attack. Something straight out of hell. You better run.” She adjusted the little cap on her head as she, too, joined the exodus.
Lilith’s stomach squeezed at the tequila. This woman was apparently a willing victim of vampires. Yet whatever had attacked the club had her scared. She could only think of one thing that might inspire such fear.
Demons, Lilith thought. What Iain and his brothers had called “shades.”
Below, crashing, smashing, screaming sounds shook the freaky club. Behind her, there were more shouts, pounding, running feet, panicked patrons trying to shove through the arched door to the street. Fairies and vampires—all sorts of bizarre, inhuman creatures she couldn’t put a name to—fled in terror in the same direction. Lilith took hesitant steps in the other.
The landing of the back stairs to the lower level sat at the right of the bar. Smoke issued from below. Was the club on fire? The whole place was lit with candles and torches.
Her hands tingled. She raised them to her eyes. Blue power pulsed, leaving bright trails in the air. No, it wasn’t a fire that had sent the patrons fleeing in terror.
She gazed into the smoke rising from the stairs and moved slowly forward. Other than the wan flicker of candlelight, she saw no conflagration below. Steeling herself, she headed for the landing.
The tingle in her hands became a throbbing ache. At the top of the stairs, the smoke billowed, as if something had passed through it. Something she couldn’t see—
Without thinking, her palms faced outward. Crackling, blue energy leapt from her. It crashed like water from a fire hose against the invisible figure. An echoing scream issued. From the smoke rising from its burning body, Lilith could make out the near-human form. Writhing, it dropped to the floor. With a hiss, the creature lay still, its naked, elongated form visible. Twitching.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. Were there more of them? The radiant pulsing around her hands gave her the answer.
Sounds of horror gave way to the thudding, shouting sound of a fight. Iain and his brothers. The thought of Iain stirred her at her center, but the urge to join the fight pressed her on more.
She took a step down, hands raised, concentrating on the smoke, on the indistinct floor below. Nothing moved other than the slowly-shifting haze. Lilith took another step down, finding her footing, ready to strike out with her Speak.
A misty façade formed, an invisible figure shoving through the thick atmosphere. It raced up the stairs, bounding three at a time. Lilith focused, letting the speak flow. Afire, the creature screamed, burned, and fell dead as it faded into view.
Prior to the night she’d first met Iain, she’d encountered the things only as the parasites she’d thought of as personal demons: leaching horrors that took a ride on a human through vice and guilt and shame. Now, the monsters walked free of their possessed hosts.
While she could sense them, mostly through the interaction of her hands, the fact that she could not see them gave her pause. Tossing a useless glance behind her, she clamped her teeth in resolve. Another step down.
Below, the smoke roiled as if by a stiff wind.
Here they come! she thought, hands raised and ready, the energy nearly blinding.
To her surprise, a stone-gray arm surrounded an invisible neck. Clawed fingers reached to grip an unseen shoulder—unseen, save for the green-black blood that spurted out.
“Fuck you,” Cree muttered before dispatching the demons. The granite giant staggered, finding his feet. Several swift punches blurred by speed ended in loud, crunching impacts. Bodies gathered at his feet, fading into view in death.
Cree stumbled under several meaty collisions; his body twisted this way and that, his knees buckling. Elbows and wing claws shredded the air. Grunting, he slid sideways to the left, his huge stone head rocking hard to the right.
The stairs shook as Cree collapsed to one knee. His right arm was yanked back, his face flattening repeatedly, blood flying. He roared in defiance, the sound clipped as something cracked into his abdomen.
Taking a huge breath, he bellowed, “Brother!”
Pounded lower and lower, Cree fought, slowly losing ground, being dragged closer to the floor.
Lilith had to strike, but she knew her speak would fry Cree if she wasn’t exactly precise. Half a face was revealed by a skim of blackish blood. Concentrating, she let her speak free.
Shrieking, the demon fell, consumed in blue fire.
Taking a deep breath, she strained her eyes. Vaguely, she made out a shape plowing through the fog. Focused, she spoke. Sizzling, smoking, falling back, another shade evaporated into smoke.
Cree managed to get his feet under him. In a moment, he rose to his feet. Fists flew, cracking and splashing gore.
Lilith isolated another foe. As her speak blazed through the air, she saw a huge hand grab for the same opponent. The creature went up in blue flame, the light reflecting on a rough statue of a man.
Iain.
Both he and his brother glanced up at her. Iain swore under his breath. Battle blood revealed another shape, and she focused.
“Leave!” Cree shouted as he grabbed for the same enemy. As it blazed and screamed, Cree’s hand jerked away. As he waved it in the air, smoke rose from his granite skin.
Unfazed, the Dryg merely thrust after another shade. He and Iain exchanged words she couldn’t hear. Then both heads jerked in the same direction. Lilith could hear the treads of many clawed feet. Cree shouted for his brothers.
She couldn’t leave them exposed like this. Iain whirled, the big man moving impossibly fast, striking out in all directions like lightning. Taking another step down, Lilith spied another one, this one covered in the rain of blood Iain had inspired. It screeched and burned, dropping among the corpses on the floor.
Steele and Raze drove in on the flank, quickly breaking bones and skulls with their irresistible strength. Most of the smoke had cleared; Lilith was now only able to see the shades from the splash of blood.
From her position, she singled out another by the ichor dripping from its head. With her speak she blasted it in flame, revealing its form in light and smoke.
Iain gazed up at her, his eyes wide. He reached for something, grabbing as he was shoved back and forth.
“Lilith, run!”
Too late, she realized the shade had made it to the stairs. Her hands blazed at its unseen approach. It was on her, stinking flesh, fetid breath. As her speak rose to blinding brilliance, she felt a sharp, clamping pain in her shoulder.
Her attack went off—practically in her face. The blazing monster was knocked away by the force of it. But she was hurt, bleeding.
The thing had bitten her.
Scrabbling footsteps raced up the treads. More of them.
“Lilith! Go! Go!” Iain screamed.
They were after her. The shades were after her. This whole fight was about her. Damn it, she wasn’t going to let any more people get hurt by these fucking things. Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, she faded.
Sounds of fighting vanished. Lilith opened her eyes to streetlight streaming through the broken windows of the abandoned Baptist Church on 12th Street.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
IAIN
EVEN AS TH
E THRONG of shades overwhelmed the four Banes, the battle shifted. Iain pulled free of the surrounding demons and raced up the stairs. Gone. Lilith had faded from the club. He saw blood on the floor. Human blood.
Enraged, he threw himself down the stairs, his kicks splitting skulls, his claws gutting his shade flesh like they were fish.
Suddenly, the Nether-spawn retreated, leaving the exhausted Dryg to chase after them. Clawed feet and whip-thin bodies navigated the club’s maze much more efficiently than quarter-ton stone bodies and worn boots.
“I found them in the northwest corner, the banquet room,” Cree panted. None of them knew a shortcut.
In a space two stories tall, clawed marks in the plaster led up to a false corner balcony. Shades scrabbled up the walls, over the decorative fixture, and out into the night. Sprinting all out, Steele grabbed the last of them by the back of the neck and threw the creature to the floor.
“Answers!” He said, crouching down, stone fist raised.
Raze took in the fallen plaster on the floor, cursing under his breath. “The emergency doors were just a diversion.”
Cree frowned. “I haven’t seen shades use actual tactics since—”
He stopped speaking as Raze hung his head.
“Since when do shades have the balls to attack terra nullius?” Steele demanded.
The shade chuckled. “Such an uproar, such fear. We should’ve invaded your precious little treaty club ages ago.”
“Bullshit.” Steele backhanded the shade. “The fuck you doing here?”
“They were after Lilith,” Iain answered for the creature.
Steele lowered his brows at Iain, shaking his head. “Again: bullshit. Shades can possess humans. Why go through all the effort?”
He found he couldn’t face his brothers, and Iain cast his eyes on the damaged wall. “She’s more than human.”
“Well, she popped those shades like kernels in hot oil,” Cree said. “At that point, I figured she was more than a waitress you picked up for a little cull and cuddle.”
“She’s my pure.”
For a moment, silence filled the room. It was broken by a chuckle from the shade. “More of us were born from family secrets than anything else.”
“Shut your hole.” Steele bounced its head off the floor and then looked at Iain. “Now’s not the time for jokes.”
“She calls herself a hunter.” Iain ignored the outburst from the shade. He could only think of Lilith. They’d touched her, wanted to do harm to her. His entire body shook with anger. Keeping a leveled head when all he wanted to do was destroy something—anything—with his hands was proving more difficult with each passing minute.
“Phyrss Almighty,” Steele said under his breath. “A fucking human.”
Raze moved to Iain and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s important to the shades for some reason. Why else would they break off when she fled?”
Rage like hot coals stirred in his gut, forcing Iain to stand over the shade. “He’s right. What do you want with her?”
“No one tells me anything,” the shade said, mockingly.
“Tell me or I’ll cut it out of you,” Iain said through his teeth.
The aura shifted from the color of diseased excrement to lifeless gray. “I live for torture.”
“I’m not talking about torture.” Iain’s fingertips opened as two-inch claws extracted.
“Heart’s blood,” Steele said, reading Iain’s mind.
The gray of the aura darkened nearly black. Iain could read its colors—and this one was afraid.
“She’s a hunter, a demon hunter,” the shade said. “Of course we came after her.”
Raze folded his arms, smirking. “To The Sanctum? A place held sacred by non-humans for centuries? I find it hard to believe you’d risk making an enemy of the Fae for some vendetta.”
“The Fae only side with their own,” the shade said too quickly.
Steele grunted. “Let me step on its neck.”
“One second.” Iain drew back his clawed hand.
“Okay, okay. She’s important to us. To the bastard of Zorn.”
The brothers exchanged expressions.
Iain kept his hand raised. “Important how?”
“How should I know?”
With all his strength, Iain slashed his stone claws into the shade’s chest, slicing open muscle and bone and organ. Blood spewed forth from the pumping heart. Iain caught it in his palm.
The shade gurgled out a curse as Iain stared at his own reflection in the blackish green gore. Motivations of the Nether-spawn never jived with the way the Dryg thought. Breathing deeply and going into a light trance, Iain calmed himself, freeing himself from his own preconceptions. He touched his tongue to the caustic fluid. As he did, he was able to pull out a fundamental truth.
“She’s their key. The key to setting Zorn free,” Iain said.
Steele sighed. “Aw, son of a bitch.”
“How can your human, your pure, be the key to setting Zorn loose?” Cree demanded.
Iain stood. “This thing didn’t know. It only knew why it was sent to capture her.”
“That just chisels my ass,” Steele said. “Now I gotta put my life on the line to defend some human bitch? Man, I quit.”
“Quit what, Steele? You’ve been relieved of duty. Hell, you’ve been exiled from Empyrean. The only way you can get any lower is death,” Cree said.
Steele spat on the floor. “Whatever.”
“The Phyrss will likely want Lilith in the Empyrean realm for her own protection. For all of our protection, really. If she does possess some way for Zorn to free himself, Lilith should be as far away from the Nether as possible,” Raze said.
“Oh, that’s fucking great. I get to watch over some fragile, short-lived, weak-ass creature so that Iain gets a free pass back home?” Steele said, giving Iain a hard shove to his shoulder. “Fuck that shit.”
“Might be a free pass for all of us once we inform the Phyrss about the shades’ plan,” Raze said.
“Yeah, right. Or it might not.”
“Either way, we need to find her before the shades do. We have to keep her safe from the scum Nether shits out after her,” Cree said. “You’ve been playing house with her, Iain. Any idea where she went?”
Slowly, he nodded. “Let me go to her alone. I think she may be injured.”
“Of course she’s injured,” Steele said. “She’s human. They tend to break and bleed pretty easy.”
“Go,” Raze said.
Iain transformed to human, shedding a hundred pounds in weight. He grabbed his trench coat on his way upstairs, extended his wings, and with two drum-like beats, made the jump to the false balcony. Pausing, he saw where the Nether-spawn had clawed through the bricks to get inside the club. They were desperate, which put Iain on edge.
Leaping from the second-story hole, he pumped his wings hard, rising above the city. He flew east, away from the city, over the black expanse of Lake Michigan, keeping the wind that howled through the city canyons to the right.
When he heard the creaking and clanking of anchored boats below, he banked westward through the pounding wind between the skyscrapers along State Street, putting the lake, the aquarium and planetarium behind him. From above, the city was an indistinct grid, save for landmarks. Iain didn’t have the eyesight for it.
Instead, he followed his spectra-burn, feeling a cooling as he soared westward, downward, into the dark streets of Chicago.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LILITH
LEGS WOBBLY, LILITH SLUMPED into an empty pew in the abandoned church, trying to catch her breath. Damn, everything hurt. In the dim streetlight streaming through the seams in the boarded-up windows, she examined her shoulder. She couldn’t get a decent look, but she could see long rents running down her deltoid. The cuts were deep, ragged, blood running down her arm to drip off the elbow and wrist.
At the same time, the beating, blazing pain covered her heart, making her clutch her c
hest with her good hand. She didn’t have time for it. With nothing to bandage the wound, she decided to apply direct pressure with her hand.
Head spinning, she pressed hard, feeling the throb of the deep cuts. She kept as still as possible, breathing deep, trying to stem the blood flow. Blood loss might be contributing to her state of mind, but Lilith didn’t believe it was the main cause. Something wasn’t right.
In the dark church alone, her brain tried to sort out her evening. Werewolves and vampires and God-knew-what-else drinking in that club, working there, like it was a regular night out. And the demons—she’d never seen so many, never imagined so many existed beyond the demonic that possessed people. They were cold and calculating. They had overwhelmed the Banes despite their size and killing skill.
She thought of Iain and the violence he’d exacted against the hell-spawn. From the pain in her chest, the inferno that had erupted when they’d parted, she wondered if he had survived the battle. Since their time together, the burning agony had grown like wildfire. Lilith now believed a permanent separation would kill her.
Angling her head, she examined the wound beneath her hand. Blood had stopped dripping. Good. But the fingers on her injured arm felt cold, tingly. She could barely make a fist. Definitely not good. If the shades came for her now—
Chains rattled on the doors, apparently replaced since she’d melted them only a short time ago. Wood groaned and splintered. The doors flew wide. Lilith didn’t know what kind of defense she could muster. Fading again, with her head feeling like she’d downed a bottle of tequila, which she probably had, was out of the question.
Her pulse slowed as she saw a silhouette at the threshold—a solid being, not some invisible demon. As the figure shouldered its way in, her heart hammered in her chest. Iain. His great veined wings shrunk and folded against his back as he entered.
“Della.” The floor shook as he raced across.
“I’m hurt.” She hated the shake in her voice, the way it pained Iain’s face. “One of the fuckers bit me.”
Iain knelt in the aisle, a hand on his good shoulder. He moved his sunglasses to the top of his head, the milky white of his eyes now a warm orange glow. “Not a bite. You’ve been clawed.”