My voice was gravel in my throat. “Go to hell.” Anger coursed through me, setting my veins on fire, rushing over the pain.
The Keeper cackled, raising gooseflesh on my arms. “I am about to kill you, Deacon Chalk. I am going to use the body of your ally to strike you dead.” He paused and looked over at Tiff. “I think after I kill her I will go back into Ahriman and have him resurrect her. He’d like that. He is such an overachiever when it comes to pretty girls and his necromancy. You wouldn’t believe the things he comes up with, even without my help.” The Keeper raised George’s hairy arms up, lifting them over me. Those heavy gorilla hands clenched into fists the size of cinderblocks.
The knife in my hand slashed out, edge biting into the knot of scar tissue that was George’s knee. Scar tissue I made with a silver bullet the first time I met him. The gnarled flesh parted bloodlessly, the weight of George’s body pulling the edges apart. The blade grated on bone and cartilage deep inside the joint.
Pushing, I rose, jerking the knife free. My hand flashed, driven by rage, and drove down again. The point of the knife sank into the Were-gorilla’s thigh. Hot, moist monkey breath misted my scalp as the Keeper roared. My left arm hung down, weak and nearly useless. I drove that shoulder into George’s chest. Twisting the knife in my hand, I scooped out a chunk of thigh meat. The blade came free in a splash of blood that scalded across my arm. A jerk of my arm drove it up and into the Were-gorilla’s guts.
Blind, fish-belly eyes widened in surprise. The ten-inch blade sank to the hilt, cutting off the Keeper’s brittle howls. Shoving with my whole body, muscles screaming in my lower back, I ripped up and out with the blade. George’s intestines tumbled over my arm like slick rubbery sausages. The air between us filled with a sick, green stink of perforated bowel.
My stomach tried to climb out of my throat.
The Keeper stumbled, big mitt hands fumbling with the loose body parts. It was gross and fucked up, but even this wouldn’t kill George. It hurt him, and therefore hurt the demon possessing him, but his lycanthropy would fix it given enough time. I had to stop him while he was being ridden by the demon; he was too powerful to leave standing. It would be like leaving a thermonuclear device in the hands of a cracked-out terrorist.
Numb fingers closed around the handle of the .44 Magnum in my waistband. The .44 Magnum loaded with silver hollowpoints.
I didn’t want to kill him, but I would be damned before I let the demon use him to kill anyone else.
That’s when Blair slammed into my back, knocked my hand away, and rode me to the ground.
39
Blair drove me face-first into the sopping carpet. I was slicked from waist to forehead with foul-smelling Weregorilla gut blood. Talons dug into the muscle of my shoulders, sticking deep into the meat, tearing into the swath of burn from earlier. I shoved with my arms, spinning against her weight, using the gore as lubricant to buck my way onto my back.
Blair crouched over me, thick blond hair wild around a face gone feral. Her pupils had dilated widely, covering the middle of her eyes, the corners puddled with crimson. Fangs distended from her gums, jaw knotted with muscle as she hissed at me. The symbols cut into her throat shone with magick as she threw back her head to strike like a cobra.
I slashed out with the knife, the keen edge splitting the skin under her breasts, across her rib cage in a wash of black, clotted, room temperature blood. She yelped, tearing down with a taloned hand. It ripped across my forearm, splashing blood from four identical slashes.
Adrenaline crystallized everything, slowing time. I watched my blood arc up, globules of it spinning and twisting in a stream. It splashed across the symbols on her throat, coating them. Soaking into them.
The effect was a metaphysical lightning strike. My power roared to life, ripping out of me and smashing into Blair. It was a boiling ocean sweeping through her. A connection forged, tumbling into the space between us. With a jolt, it locked into place. I felt her dead heart start up. It spasmed, jerking to life, starting to thump in her chest. It pounded in heavy, hard beats, knocking around for a second before evening into a smooth, solid rhythm.
Beating in time to mine.
Her face smoothed into her human guise. She looked at me with wide blue eyes, lips slightly parted over sheathed fangs.
The magick that had controlled her broke like spun sugar in the hand of a child.
My voice was harsh through clenched teeth. “Get the hell off me, bloodsucker.”
Blair flew off me, literally flew. She rose into the air with a swift jerk like she had been pulled by strings. She landed, crouching on top of the bar like a cat.
I stood. The connection stretched between us. I could feel her in my mind, like that thing you don’t want to forget so you shove it into a corner of your skull for later. I pushed a thought out at her.
Raise your right hand.
A long-taloned hand rose up, lifting over her head and staying there.
Scratch your ass.
With one hand still over her head, the other one went behind her, moving in a back-and-forth motion as she did what I thought.
Stop.
The vampire froze in place. The connection was strong, humming between us.
Kill yourself.
Blair shook, body convulsing from head to toe like she had hypothermia. The connection between us flared hot, rolling back on me like a desert wind. My nostrils filled with the smell of vampire, a reptile smell of snakeskin and venom. The connection cooled off. Blair was still undead on the bar.
Apparently I couldn’t command her to do that.
“Deacon!”
The world came back to me with a crack. Sounds rushed into my ears. I spun to find Ronnie and Tiff helping Boothe to stand. He had shrunk, still in his hybrid form, but more man than rabbit. One side of his head was swollen, eye squeezed closed by a bruise the size of my foot.
Special Agent Heck was on the other side of the room. His white shirt was splashed with blood, blazing pink from collar to midchest in a crimson tie-dye. The blood came from a gash on his neck. His gun was blazing, pumping bullets into the chest of a vampire that jerked and convulsed under the firepower. It took a second, but the vamp finally fell, exploding into dust before it hit the floor. An orb bounced off the carpet. It was revealed as the bloodsucker disintegrated around it. The softball-sized orb looked like it was made of solid crystal.
My mind blinked. What the hell?
A few feet away from him Larson lay in a heap, limbs crumpled and tangled. He looked dead, but I couldn’t see any blood. The cross he had been holding lay in his open palm, glowing. My eyes tracked around him, looking, searching.
On the other side of him a vampire was wrapped around Kat.
The vampire pressed himself against her on the ground, its face buried against her throat. Wet, snuffling sounds came from the bloodsucker. It had a scrawny arm wedged into Kat’s mouth, forcing her jaws apart. Black blood ran from four slashes down that arm. It slid, pouring into Kat’s open mouth. Pouring down her throat.
Everything else shut away as I pushed off, moving across the floor, jumping on the stage, sliding across the boards on my hip. I bounced off the edge on the other side, feet on the floor again, moving. Two more strides and I was on them, fingers closing in the vampire’s permed hair. It was brittle, breaking in my hand, crumbling.
I couldn’t pull the vamp off with his fangs locked in her jugular, not without ripping Kat’s throat out. The bloodsucker rode her, pinning her to the floor with his body, grinding into her. His arm bent her head back, stretching her neck under his sucking mouth. Kat’s eyes were wide, panic raw inside them. Her screams were muffled against undead flesh, choking wetly down into gurgles, drowning on vampire blood. She fought weakly, struggles slowing to shudders.
Kat was dying while I stood there.
I had to get the vampire off her.
The blade in my hand slid into the hollow under the vampire’s ear. I shoved deep, wedging the point between
the jawbone and its socket. Cold blood jetted over my hand. I jerked up and then down, severing the tendons that held the vampire’s jaw in place. Prying with the blade and pulling up broke the seal of the vamp’s mouth on Kat’s throat. He came away with a sloppy, wet, sucking sound.
Rage roared from deep inside me. It blasted through my chest, spilling into my arms. The vampire was weightless as I jerked him into the air, holding him by his fried hair. He dangled in my grip, kickingand screaming through a jaw that hung askew. His tongue flailed, loose jawbone banging against collarbones. I rammed the knife in its bloody mouth, sawing back and forth. It took a second before the head popped off, coming away in my hand. The body turned to dust before it hit the ground at my feet.
A second crystal globe thudded to the carpet.
What the fuck?
It rolled away, zigging and zagging until it tapped to a stop by the stage.
Kat reached up, arm limp. Blood spurted from the wound on her neck weakly in slow beats. The part of my mind that stays detached realized her heart was slowing down. Under the smears of blood and gore, her skin was colorless. She tried to turn, eyes looking, searching.
Larson crawled to her, scrambling to get there. His hand closed on hers and he pulled her close. There was a lump the size of a baseball on his head. He looked up at me, anguish raw on his face, tears streaming. The pupil of his right eye had blown, eating all the blue of the iris. The eye had also gone lazy, drifting to the corner unanchored.
Head injury.
“We have to get her out of here! Deacon, please! She’s dying.”
The Keeper’s voice came from behind me.
“She’s not the only one.”
40
The Keeper stood in George’s body on the stage. The demon had scooped up the Were-gorilla’s entrails and now they draped over his shoulder in a lumpy, bubble-gum pink bandolier. The wound across George’s stomach yawned open like a toothless maw. It was starting to seal but still gaped. The knee I had sliced apart had knit itself back together.
Damn lycanthrope healing.
The brass stripper pole lay on the stage, wrenched from its moorings. Ahriman was still unconscious, draped head down on George’s other shoulder.
Father Mulcahy dangled from one of the possessed Were-gorilla’s hands.
The demon cackled. “Bring me the mix-breed bastards or I will kill the priest.”
Larson screamed at me from the floor. He struggled to lift Kat. Failing. “Deacon! We have to get Kat out of here!”
The world shrank, everything becoming fuzzy. Disconnected.
Tiff and Boothe had guns out, pointing at the Keeper.
Special Agent Heck was walking with his gun raised.
Blair still crouched on the bar like a statue, eyes jerking wildly around the room, the only movement she made.
My hand slid along my lower back, my nails skimming the thin cotton of my shirt. The grip of the snubnosed .44 Magnum slipped across my palm like a lover. It was heavy in my hand as I pulled it from the holster. The front sight dragged across my kidney as I swung it out and around, raising it up. One eye closed, sighting down my arm and over my hand, I lined the blade of the front sight with George’s head.
The world opened back up in a rush.
The Keeper jerked Father Mulcahy between himself and our guns. “You can’t shoot this body without hitting your precious priest. Give me what I want and I will go away.”
I widened my chest, cheek almost touching my outstretched arm. The front sight looked as wide as a street. “You know what your problem is?”
“I have the advantage here!”
Larson screamed at me again. I ignored it, concentrating on the possessed lycanthrope holding the priest and the warlock.
“You don’t understand a damn thing about us. The man you’re using as a hostage would rather die than let you have those kids.”
The Keeper twisted George’s face into a mask of hatred. He danced back and forth on bowed legs. “But are you willing to kill him to stop me?”
My mind flashed to every talk I had ever had with Father Mulcahy. All the times we had discussed the nature of evil and how it was our responsibility to stand in the gap. That protecting the innocent, no matter the cost, was the reason we had both been put on our paths. I thought about how he would get worked up, honey and whiskey voice deepening as he got animated. He would talk to me about righteousness with a fervor that belonged to a Pentecostal instead of a staid Catholic priest. The speeches would always end with the warmth of sentimentality and scotch and the feeling that this man, who I loved like a second father, was proud of me and the work we did together.
I thought about all the times he had stood with me, shoulder to shoulder against the vile forces of hell itself. He stood, unflinching, even though he didn’t have Angel blood to make him stronger. He stood with only the strength of his body and the protection of his Faith.
I thought about his love for Sophia’s kids. Conviction burning fever bright in his gray eyes as he said he would do whatever it took to keep them safe.
I thought about the gun in my hand. A .44 Magnum full of bullets powerful enough to sever limbs and blow fistsized holes in people. I carried it as my last resort. The gun guaranteed to kill something. If I shot a human with it, there would be no surviving. No flesh wounds.
The Keeper barked at me. “I know how much you love this man, Deacon. He’s the father you don’t have anymore. Are you willing to trade his life to save three mixed-breed mongrels?”
The gun roared as I squeezed the trigger.
The effect was instantaneous. Faster than the eye could see, the bullet crossed the space between me and the demon. It went past Father Mulcahy at 1100 feet per second, cracking the sound barrier.
It was at maximum velocity when it blasted into Ahriman’s skull, began to tumble, and tore his head apart like a water balloon filled with gore.
The Keeper’s voice ripped out of George’s throat, a tornado of glass shards. He screamed inhumanly, the sound so loud and high-pitched it made the bones of my arm vibrate. The air filled with the stifling reek of sulfur. Demonic power exploded, rolling over me in a tidal wave of honey hornets, sticky and stinging and crushing. My vision went blurry, eyes watering desperately to wash out the acid sting.
Blinking, I barely had time to react when the Keeper leaped off the stage at me, swinging Father Mulcahy like a weapon. The priest’s body whipped toward me. I tried to turn and catch him, to take the blow, absorb the damage, so he wouldn’t be hurt.
It was like getting slammed into by a city bus.
Air drove from my lungs, scattering black specks across my eyesight like birdseed at a wedding. I wrapped my arms around him as I fell, trying to pull him out of the demon-possessed Were-gorilla’s hands. The Keeper let go, shoving both of us away. I held on to Father Mulcahy as we skidded across the carpet. Rug burn splashed across my arm, raw and nasty. We banged to a stop with him lying on top of me.
Gunshots cracked from the other side of the club. I couldn’t see, but I knew Tiff, Boothe, and Heck had begun shooting at the Keeper.
The priest weighed a thousand pounds as I pushed, sliding him off me. He rolled bonelessly to the floor. My chest sprang up, free from the burden, dragging air back in my lungs. It burned going down my throat, raw and splintery. Each gasp lightened my lungs, making them feel like they were reinflating, filling them with small sips of sweet oxygen.
Father Mulcahy lay still and limp on the floor. I reached for him, my hand touching his shoulder.
Not breathing.
My heart lurched, clenching tight like a fist.
No. Not now. Please God. Not now. Not yet.
A tremor ran under my hand.
Father Mulcahy hitched in a breath.
Oh, Holy Mary, Mother of God. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. I owe you.
The priest sat up with a groan. He looked around. His eyes were out of focus, glazed over. “What’s happening?”
Pushing my
self to my feet, I pulled him up. He was steady enough to stand. Larson screamed at me again.
Kat.
My eyes cut over. Larson was still cradling Kat, she was still breathing, chest jerking up and down. Blood had stopped shooting from her neck but still dripped off her. She had lost a lot of blood, skin the color of paper. I had to get her out of here or she wasn’t going to make it. That brick crashed back in my chest.
Movement turned my head.
The Keeper had Ahriman’s corpse by the leg. He was jumping away, leaping and swinging toward the back of the club. Tiff, Boothe, and Heck were still shooting. The demon-possessed Were-gorilla stopped at the door leading to the employees’ lounge. A roar tore out of his throat as he spun and tossed the dead wizard across the room toward Tiff, Boothe, and Heck.
The body whipped through the air, scattering them like bowling pins.
“I am the power behind the magick! You destroyed my vessel, so I will use this one, but I will still help Selene crack the skin of this world.” He lowered his eyes to me, glaring. Monkey lips cracked open, spitting out one word.
“Detonate.”
He spun, disappearing through the door. His last word spun magick through the room. It swept in like a pollen cloud. My mouth filled with the taste of vinegar and iron.
At my feet, the crystal orb from the dusted vampire began to pulse with a sinister red light. The magick in the room spiked with each throb of the crystal.
Oh, shit.
“Everyone get out!”
Pushing off, I turned and propelled Father Mulcahy. He stumbled toward the door. Tiff was there, shoving her head under his arm and pulling it across her shoulders for support. She began to run, dragging him along with her. Special Agent Heck was right beside them. Blair had disappeared from the top of the bar.
The magick spiked faster and faster, cycling up and down, building in intensity. Every time it spiked it felt like someone was shoving a hot poker in my spine. We had seconds, maybe less.
Blood and Magick Page 17