Blood Drawn: A novel of The Demon Accords

by John Conroe

  “You predicted that,” I said.

  “Correct. It is logical for the Vorsook to place eggs in four of the world’s ten deepest trenches based upon nearby human population density. The Peru-Chile trench, the Puerto Rico trench, the Kermadec trench, and the Japan trench are the most probable locations. Having second-stage krays encounter poorly equipped or densely packed populations upon landfall would lead to maximum reproduction rates at the beginning of the attack. Also, had the twin seismic attacks been successful, the United States would be reeling from unprecedented disaster in the central and western parts of the country, diverting resources from the east and leaving Florida, Puerto Rico, and the rest of the Caribbean exposed to infestation by kraykenast emergence.”

  “And we have sufficient resources in those four locations?” Tanya asked, looking at the suddenly updated wall monitors.

  “Reports of emergence are now coming in from eastern Japan, Jamaica, New Zealand, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. Father, I should like to suggest you might start your tour in Puerto Rico with Mia Molina from Arcane. Tanya, military presence is strong in all four but whether it will be sufficient will have to be seen.”

  “Right. Let’s go,” Declan said, but Stacia was already up and moving, her small pack following her. I stood up as well. “I’m coming too. I want to see one of these things up close.”

  Tanya held my eyes for a moment, then nodded. Our personal bond hummed with unspoken promises. She turned to the big wall screens that Omega had begun to update, firing off questions to her personnel as well as the computer.

  I’m pretty sure I was the only one to notice my grandfather following me.

  On a floor several levels below the command floor, Declan had a space that he’d prepared for opening portals, with ten pre-drawn portal circles already in place. He knelt and added the runes needed to match the holographic picture Omega projected in the air in front of him.

  “Who is Mia Molina?” Holly, Stacia’s second, asked.

  “Arcane student from Puerto Rico,” Stacia answered. “Recent admission. Mother is a voudo mambo or priestess.”

  “Is that a witch?” Holly asked.

  “Not exactly,” Declan said. “More of a religious leader. But many of the bigger, more successful leaders of religions like hoodoo, voudo, or others have witch-like genetics. Kind of a natural selection thing. Mia is one of those.” He finished writing and touched the circle edge. A ripple appeared in the air over the drawing, a kind of rip that opened and became a mirrored surface. I looked at Gramps to find him watching every move the kid made, his expression clearly fascinated.

  “It’s open,” Declan said. Instantly, before anyone could move, one of Omega’s orbs shot through.

  “Clear,” the second orb said.

  Holly looked at Stacia and, at her Alpha’s nod, she stepped through the circle. A second later, her voice came over the speaker on Omega’s remaining drone. “All good.”

  Devaney stepped through, followed by the young werewolf Kristin, who had just arrived from Arcane hours ago. Stacia went next and Declan turned to me and Gramps. “All aboard,” he joked with a smile and a wave. I picked up the heavy soft-sided cooler by my side and stepped through, my grandfather right behind me.

  A moment of lurching dislocation and discomfort roiled my balance and my stomach. Then I was focusing on new sensations of heat, humidity, the smell of ocean, voices speaking Spanish, firelight from a ring of torches and candles, and finally, the sound of surf breaking in the darkness behind the small group that waited for us.

  Gramps stumbled a little and I grabbed his arm automatically. It was hard with muscle that hadn’t been there just days ago. He gently shook me off and straightened up.

  Stacia waved us forward and a second later, Declan emerged from the mirrored surface behind us. Then the portal zipped itself shut, leaving just tropical darkness.

  A ring of people waited ahead, most holding long guns, Stacia already speaking to a young woman with dark Hispanic features, and a slightly older woman who was likely her mother. The Alpha werewolf was already introducing the team. “And this is Chris Gordon, his grandfather Alex Gordon, and finally, Declan, who I believe you’ve met when visiting Mia at school,” Stacia said. “Everyone, this is Mia Molina and her mother, Alondra Molina.”

  The mother and several of the onlookers widened their eyes when Stacia pointed me out, a few stepping back. At Declan’s introduction, the mother and daughter looked relieved.

  “Hi, Mia, Mrs. Molina,” Declan said, which earned him a rueful smile from the mother.

  “I am Alondra, yes?” she asked him pointedly, her accent thick.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said with his habitual deference. “What’s the situation?”

  Mia pointed behind herself, the watchers moving apart enough that I could see a line of torches stuck in the sand, ocean waves breaking ten yards behind them. What caught my attention was the squirming, screeching line of six-legged monsters on the beach, pressing against an unseen barrier, right near the torches

  “Why haven’t you killed them?” Declan asked the girl with a frown, his eyes staying on the monsters pressing against what had to be a ward of some type.

  “It is all we can do to hold them at bay,” the girl protested with no discernable accent.

  “We talked about this at Arcane. Get one and use it against the others,” he said, moving toward the threat. Stacia’s pack instantly surrounded him, each werewolf unlimbering a weapon as they moved forward toward the little monsters.

  “Good discipline,” Gramps murmured softly to me as we followed.

  Up close, the alien monsters were horrifying. Each was small, maybe squirrel-sized, hissing and squeaking in very high ranges. The six legs and dual-clawed toes were weird, but the hooded heads filled with lamprey-like mouths were much, much worse.

  “Injuries, deaths?” Declan asked.

  “Yes, many. The only people down here were the assigned watchers, each armed with a shotgun,” Mia said, waving at the small group of gun-toting onlookers. “They still got mauled until Mother and I activated the wards. Which we are having trouble holding, by the way,” she said pointedly. I looked back at the watchers and noted some dark splotches on light-colored clothing… and a few blanket-covered forms on the ground behind them.

  Declan glanced her way and nodded. “Just a bit longer, Mia, if you can,” he said, reaching into his black nylon messenger bag. He took out a pair of the metal portal popper orbs, holding them in his right palm. A moment later, they disappeared and one of the bigger krays exploded, spattering the ward with gore. Reaching back into his bag, Declan pulled out a coil of copper wire. He put one end against one of the two popper orbs that had floated back to him, dripping with gore. Somehow the wire stuck to the orb like it was glued. Then the other end went against the other orb, also sticking. The two orbs shot apart, the copper line unwinding in two directions, one down the shoreline, the other up it.

  When wire fell to the ground, Declan touched it and said something in Gaelic. “Okay, I got it.”

  The young female witch student slumped in relief and the line of krays stumbled forward a few inches, slamming against another barrier at the wire’s edge. Small impacts higher up, well above the beach, showed little spikes of some dark material smacking into Declan’s shield.

  Declan crooked two fingers at the exploded kray. The carcass, which continued to twitch with nerves, came across his barrier spell, floating down to land between two brightly lit torches.

  We crowded close to look at it, the offal and gore stinking of something like commercial cleaning chemicals. Declan unfolded a piece of copier paper, revealing one of his spell diagrams, which he set on the ground. He unfolded a Swiss Army knife and used the blade to scoop a piece of green-blooded flesh into the center of his paper diagram.

  “I know all of that, but I don’t have the power to hold a ward and blast them,” Mia protested.

  “That’s okay. We’ll fix that. First let me do this,”
our witch said, and then he lightly touched the edge of the diagram with his index finger.

  All of the monsters in front of us exploded at the same time. One loud, continuous pop, up and down the beach.

  “Approximately six thousand, four hundred on land.”

  Declan grimaced a little at that count, obviously not fully satisfied. “Copier effect. And the salt water dilutes my spell for the ones still in the ocean,” he said. “But the field is open for experimentation,” he said, looking at me. More krays were coming out of the ocean surf and I instantly understood his meaning.

  Calling Grim to the surface, I moved.

  Chapter 43

  The little monsters came apart like anything else I had fought, but the clouds of needle-like spikes they threw with their tails were literally a pain and the rat-sized creatures didn’t hesitate to throw themselves at me, meat-grinder sucker mouths first. My hardened skin blocked most of the needles, but little spots of numbness bloomed across my body. After thirty or so seconds of mayhem, I returned to the others, feeling like I was moving through cobwebs as I passed through Declan’s ward.

  “Well?” Stacia asked.

  “Fast and tough, but killable,” I said. “Very strong and don’t let the mouth get on you. Also, those spikes they throw are problematic. Pretty much clouds of them. Enough hit you and it could overwhelm either LV or V-squared immunities. Try shooting them,” I suggested.

  Stacia nodded to Bruce Devaney and he stepped up with a short, handy little AR-15 pistol. A flat gray sound suppressor, or silencer, was attached to the front of the barrel.

  With careful aim, Devaney fired a rapid string of shots, the supersonic bullets making a cracking sound as they broke the sound barrier and a thwacking sound as they smacked into krays.

  “High-speed monolithic hollow points,” Devaney said as we watched the results. The bullets did damage, blowing through the creatures, but single body shots, particularly near the rear half, failed to put the monsters down. However, any shots that hit the front pair of shoulders dropped them fast.

  Omega sent an orb out over the beach, a blue laser beam blinking on and off multiple times.

  “I surmise some central nervous system analog to a brain lies between the first pair of legs. Coring this nerve bundle appears effective.”

  “What about frontal shots?” Gramps asked.

  The werewolf and the orb opened fire at almost the same time.

  “Shots in the upper arc of the mouth seem to reach that brain pan that Omega mentioned,” the former deputy reported.

  “I concur.”

  “What did you mean by copier effect?” Gramps asked Declan. “The random damage and mutation that occurs from cellular reproduction? So that each kray is a little different from the others?”

  Declan looked at my grandfather for a second, his expression first surprised, then rueful. “Ah, actually I was referring to the spell on the paper. I photocopied it over and over and the last batch were made from copies of copies. They got a little faded. But your explanation probably accounts for more of the reduction in spell efficiency than mine.”

  “Wow, teacher got schooled,” Mia said with a smirk.

  “Hmm, let’s talk about you and power, young Jedi,” Declan said, reaching into his bag of tricks. “I know you’re new to the concept of scavenging power from other sources so I’m going to give you a battery.” He pulled a round disc of carved and polished wood from his bag. “This is Rowan wood from Fairie. It’s literally saturated with magic, and the spells carved into it will slowly recharge it after use. Let’s see what you can do with it,” he said, handing it to her.

  The girl’s eyes had gotten wide at the sight of it and her mother licked her lips once, staring at it like it was gold.

  “Go on, do the spell,” Declan said, holding out another chunk of gory kray flesh on his knife blade.

  Mia looked from the disc she held gingerly to the knife, her expression anxious, but finally reached out and took the knife. Declan pulled another sheet of paper from his bag and set it on the sand, spell picture-side up.

  The girl carefully tipped the blade, letting the green-goo-covered chunk of alien flesh fall onto the exact center of the diagram, still cradling the disc of wood in her left. She handed the knife back to the warlock and then touched her right finger to the diagram, speaking softly in Spanish. The little chunk of flesh sizzled and popped and the sound of exploding krays came from the beach.

  “Approximately one thousand, four hundred,” Omega’s orb reported.

  Mia looked up in astonishment, clearly pleased at that outcome.

  “Guard it well; it’s imported, you know?” Declan said with a quick little grin. Then he was back to business. “Okay. Wanna check them out?” he asked Stacia.

  She snorted and handed him her shotgun. The rest of her pack immediately started to lay aside weapons and then clothes. Devaney handed Gramps his rifle, then began peeling off his shirt.

  The locals muttered a bit but none of them looked away as bare flesh emerged. Stacia Changed first and was by far the fastest, human woman one moment, white-furred killing machine the next. The others all took longer, with Kristin the slowest and Holly the next fastest after Stacia. In less than a minute, we had two giant wolves and two woman-wolf combat forms. I hadn’t realized that Holly could take the intermediate form. My understanding was that it took years to get that level of control.

  The seven-foot bundle of muscle and white fur that was Stacia looked at me, pointing two clawed fingers at my eyes and then one clawed index finger at Declan.

  “Yes, I know: my watch on the witch kid,” I said.

  “Who is standing right here,” he muttered, rummaging in his bag. I glanced at Gramps and found him watching the wolves, both four and two-legged with fascination and maybe a slight yellow film over his eyes.

  “Right, good hunting,” Declan said.

  Holly shot off down the dark beach, the two wolves racing after her. Stacia gave us one more yellow-eyed look then took off after them, catching up and passing all of them in seconds. Almost immediately came snarls and growls as they began to hunt.

  Declan sat down on the ground, legs folded and crossed in front of him like he was ready to meditate. But instead of putting his hands on his knees, he set them on the ground on each side, palms down. The gray nano bracelets on each wrist immediately morphed, a line of liquid gray running up to form a monocular around his right eye.

  “I just want to see what might be around,” he said. “You know… just in case.” Then he closed his eyes. Gramps looked at me and mouthed, “Just in case?”

  I waved down the beach at the marauding pack that had just started to find krays to attack. Gramps frowned so I mouthed, “Overwatch,” and instant understanding flooded his features.

  “You can speak out loud,” Declan said, eyes still closed. “I’m not meditating, just trying to place a call.”

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Yeah, there’s a number of Earth elementals around, what with the deep trench being subducted way down underneath us,” he said. “Lots of seismic stresses here in the Caribbean.”

  “Can I ask what you will do with those elementals? If you need to?” Gramps asked.

  Before he could answer, a sharp howl of pain came from one of the wolves, the youngest, maybe. Declan opened his eyes, which were now glowing blue, and his expression went from calm to furious in a split second. He slapped his right hand on the beach sand with an audible growl and the ground jumped. Mia, her mother, and most of the onlookers were knocked right off their feet. Gramps and I stayed upright, even after the ground sort of flexed underneath us. But as fast as it shook, it stopped and then white arcs of lighting snapped up from, well, almost everywhere.

  All up and down the beach and out in the waves, lightning jumped and sizzled, leaping from one spot to another. It formed chains of complex arcing electricity that raced away from the witch kid in both directions, and I suddenly understood that it was hitt
ing the krays. Only the krays.

  The electric storm was here and gone in just a couple of seconds, leaving lumps of smoking, steaming burnt flesh.

  Chapter 44

  Moments later, a white blur arrived, standing in front of the sitting witch, glaring at him with yellow eyes. He held her gaze without blinking. “Kristin got hurt. I’m not having it,” he said. “Plus, there will be more.”

  “Not for some time, Father. That outburst killed every kray for two miles in each direction and a half mile out to sea,” Omega reported.

  Stacia Changed back, even as the rest of her wolves came back to us. The youngest and smallest, Kristin, was still limping, blood staining her fur, but I could see several perfectly round wounds, each two to three inches in diameter, on her thigh already healing.

  “I would have howled if there was need. She’s fine,” the werewolf Alpha said, clearly furious.

  “There are hundreds of thousands of these things out there and just four of you,” he replied, voice calm but a note of steel underneath it. He stood up and dusted off. “It was just a recon anyway. Find out for yourselves what weres could do against them.”

  Stacia turned to me, frustrated at what might have been an overreaction on his part. I shook my head at her. Declan’s transformation from calm to absolute rage was instant, and the subsequent demonstration of power was off the charts. She might have a legitimate complaint, but he wasn’t going to hear it right now.