I waited a few seconds and heard the locks rattling open. She cracked the door and looked out. “Caine, you’re here late. Everything’s okay? Is Adrian…?”
“Fine,” I said, “though he could use an enema.”
Though concerned, her perfect smile was in place, as always. Creepy. Against the darkness of her hair, the pink streaks were nearly three-dimensional. She wore a diaphanous nightgown, a pale peach color that floated around her like a wet dream waiting to happen. My gaze naturally dropped to her thinly-veiled breasts. I said, “I need your help with something. Can I come in?”
Gloria opened the door and stepped to the side to let me pass. She closed the door, relocking it. Without a word, she led me up the stairs to her apartment. Her silk nightgown hugged her curves, draping her legs, whispering sexily as she moved. Her assets right in my face, I was reminded of just how beautiful she was.
Without looking back, she said, “Your pulse is a little fast. See something you like?”
“You could say that.”
The magic locks on her upstairs door were strong. Not even I could break the blood magic. She opened the way and stood aside so I could enter first. The living room was like a tribute to Victorian sensibilities, but didn’t lack modern conveniences. The hard wood floors were cork wood. The walls had riotous flowers painted on them, species from all over the world. The white antique couch lacked one arm and had only half a back that started high and sloped into extinction. An iPod lay on the cushions, music leaking from earphones. There were chairs that might have come from a European court. And a treadmill for running that faced a small TV on a stand. A crystal chandelier hung from the middle of the ceiling. Pink blackout curtains on her windows were heavy enough to block the sun during the day.
Yeah, this is a place where a vampire would live.
Gloria pointed at the couch, for me to sit, and headed for the mini bar in the corner. She made me a gin and pineapple drink as I took my seat, relaxing. She smiled that sweet smile of hers. “What do you need help with, sweetie?”
“I need you to use your blood magic to track a dhampyr,” said.
“Why are you wasting your time with one of those.”
“Business. The bitch will lead me to someone that needs killing.”
“Well, I’ll need some of her blood to do that.”
“How about some of mine instead? She bit me, so my blood is in her.”
“Yes, that will work.” Gloria brought me my drink, and set it down on a coffee table.
By then, I’d unzipped the apocalypse suit down to my waist and slipped my left arm out of its sleeve. I pulled out a pocketknife and put the edge on my forearm. “How much do you need?” Gloria’s hand enveloped mine, straightening out my left arm. “Put away the knife. I’ll extract the sample, my way.”
She smiled, flashing fangs. Her eyes turned blood red. She ran soft fingers along the radial artery in my left arm. Her smile lacked threat, friendly, not even sexual. That was a line neither of us seriously wanted to cross. The friendship would have suffered, and she was too good a resource, one I depended on.
She lifted my hand, bringing the wrist to her lips.
My phone went off. I said, “Yeah?”
Old Man yelled, “Put her on, now!”
I handed her my phone.
She paused and took the phone with a question in the lift of her eyebrows. She put the phone to her ear.
I couldn’t hear what Old Man was saying, but he was talking—fast. After a moment, Gloria’s eyes widened. She shot me a look of disbelief, as if Old Man were telling her I loved mankind and abhorred violence. She looked away and continued to listen, nodding now and again. She said, “And you never told him?”
What the hell?
She nodded absently. “Sure, I can see that. Okay, mum’s the word.” She turned off the phone and handed it back to me.
I took the phone with my free hand, and put it away. “What’s that all about?”
She smiled with true regret. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to talk to Lauphram. Meanwhile…”
She bit into my arm with relish, her eyes rolling to the back of her head like my blood was the finest vintage ever discovered. Her breathing stopped as she lost focus on passing for human. After a while, I actually had to put a foot against her stomach to push her away. “Gloria! What the hell!”
Drifting back to me, she licked her lips, as the red fog cleared from her stare. She reached down and caressed my face in apology. “Sorry, that was … rude.” Her fingertips glided past the bite mark on my arm and the punctures closed—by magic.
“Never mind that,” I said, “did you get what we need?”
“I think so. Just a minute.” She whirled away, her sheer nightgown belling around her legs as she crossed the room to an antique roll top desk. Lifting the cover, Gloria reached in and gathered several items that she brought back with her.
I picked my drink off the coffee table and guzzled. By the time I finished the sweetly sharp pineapple gin, she had a city map spread on the coffee table and was kneeling by it, her ankles daintily crossed behind her. She lit a small red candle. From the cloying iron scent, I’d say there was blood mixed into the wax. A pendant dangled from her right hand, a silver chain with a claw gripping a long narrow sliver of clear crystal. She rubbed the crystal across her mouth, tinting it with my blood.
The stone was now a pale shimmer of red. She moved the pendant until it cast a spangle of pink light on the map. After that, she held her hand perfectly still. Without the waver of fatigue a human would have felt, her arm might as well have been chiseled from marble.
As she looked up at me, her smile turned predatory; she’d started the hunt.
Her lips shaped words that twisted unexpectedly. Her tone was sultry and dark, almost sibilant at times. Her hand never shifted position, but the pink tangle of light slid across the map and stopped.
I bent forward and made a mental note of the street corner. That would do. My Dragon Sight tat would fine-tune the location once I got there. I stood and slipped my arm back into its sleeve, zipping up the suit.
Gloria blew out the candle and licked the bloody crystal clean. She dropped it on the map and almost seemed to levitate back to her feet. She came around the table to stare into my eyes. My shield stayed dormant. She wasn’t trying to roll my mind. She brushed her hand down the line of my zipper, nearly to my crotch, stopping just short. She murmured, “You will be careful, right?”
“Sure, you know me.”
Her eyes were dilated. There was a slight drunken slur to her woods, “Yes, that’s why I worry.” She was buzzed on my blood. Old Man and I were going to have a serious talk when this mess was over. He was keeping secrets from me, and some of them were mine.
I smiled and kissed her cheek. “Gotta go kill someone. Catch you later.”
Her hand withdrew. She went ahead to open the locks for me. Me and my hard-on somehow made it through the doors to where the night waited like a beast, ready to pounce.
TWENTY-NINE
“War is nature’s way of preventing
the stupid from breeding.”
—Caine Deathwalker
I hurried from the bar, flicking a glance at the black vans. A twinge in my right leg warned me that an hour had passed and that I was about to pay for the last time I used Vampire Speed. I hurried. I didn’t want to lose it here, and display my weakness.
Makes it harder to be a bad ass in people’s eyes.
I made it inside the mustang and slammed my door the same moment pain slammed the breath from my lungs. Cramps knotted all along my legs. I clenched my teeth and bit off a curse, coming off the seat to straighten my legs. I smashed my fist into the roof a half dozen times. As the pain edged down to barely tolerable, I sat and white knuckled the steering wheel, an unvoiced growl in my throat. I managed to deactivate the security system with sweat running into my eyes.
I had no time for this so I tried a martial arts visualization,
imagining myself as a glass figurine. The pain was light ghosting harmlessly through me. I did my best to believe.
Remember to ride the pain, to be the pain, pain doesn’t hurt itself.
Someone tapped at my car window.
My meditation dissolved. Fresh agony knifed through me. I drew a deep, staggered breath, and pried a hand off the steering wheel to power the electric window down.
One of the Japanese leaned down and peered at me. “Do we not have some place to go?” he wondered.
“We’ll go when I’m ready.” He flinched back from the death in my eyes, and ran back to his van. By then, the pain was slacking. I sent the mustang hurtling out into the streets. The vans stayed well back as if the vehicles were uncertain of my temper. The streets passed in a blur of light and darkness. Skyscrapers looming on every side, as cars weaved ahead and behind, and in the other lane. As late as it was, there were a lot of people that didn’t want to go home yet.
I remembered Haruka—dead, frozen, waiting for me—I couldn’t go home yet either, even though I was dragging, fighting the echoes of pain, and the squeezing fist of fatigue. Old Man’s hand emerged from the mirror on my chest. He held a shot of something bubbly and crystal pink. I took the glass and drank. Fire pulsed in my veins. Tiredness retreated to a safe distance. My thoughts sharpened.
I gave the empty glass back to the hand. Both withdrew.
“Thanks,” I said, “for whatever that was.”
Eventually, we reached the right address and piled out of our vehicles. I looked up. We were in the downtown area where eight of the tallest buildings in California were located. The building we wanted didn’t quite measure up to four hundred feet, but its sleek, new millennium design was impressive. Edison Tower was a behemoth of blue glass, steel, and white concrete at the base. Due to city codes, the top would be flat, and have a helicopter pad.
The windows in the face were dark, as if the building was drowsing. I knew this wasn’t true. I felt magic alive in the structure, like the pulsing of blood. A scent of malice sizzled the air. A death trap. No two ways about it. He knows we’re coming.
I could have had Old Man open a demon gate for us all to pop inside, but the warlock would be shielding himself from detection, and if we did hit his location by blind chance, he’d see us coming through the glowing gate and blast us—Like shooting fireflies in a mason jar. Going in on foot would be slower, but not more dangerous. At least, I hoped not.
Hiro’s men stood a few feet from me. A few were missing, those the slayers had wounded, and there were some reinforcements as well, twenty of us now, including the two scouts I’d sent around the structure to reconnoiter. They returned, slinking along like cat-shadows in their black body-stockings, gloves and masks. A bit theatrical, but who was I to talk? I wore a zombie apocalypse combat suit with a fully stocked weapons harness.
The returning men bowed shallowly. One of them said, “No break in. Motorcycle in alley.”
The other broke in with very good English, “It has a vanity plate; SLAYRIDE. And there’s a shadow climbing the side of the building.”
“Yeah, sounds like Vivian’s here alright.” She was heading for the roof, probably thinking it would be easier to break in from there. I liked a more direct approach. I walked up to one of the glass doors and braced myself to kick.
One of the Japanese held up a hand. “Wait, the alarm!”
“There will be no alarm,” I said. “Salem wants us all to himself.”
I kicked the door in. Shards sprayed inward across green and white checkerboard tiles. I kicked a few times to clear the jagged glass still in the door’s frame, and waved the guys through. They ran past me, ducking under a horizontal crossbar on the door frame to get inside the lobby. They each kept a gun in hand. I headed to a hall, about to turn left in search of the stairwell entrance at the far side of the building. Most of the men were with me, but four lingered at the elevator.
I called back. “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”
The four men ignored me as the elevators dinged open. They stepped inside. The door closed and we heard the sound of metal tearing, crumpling itself up like a paper wad. The screams were cut off sharply. One of the men next to me started to say something. I held up a hand to silence him. “Wait for it,” I said.
The doors opened and the elevator car, considerably smaller now, was spit out with a hell of a racket, its broken cables dragging along like dead snakes.
“Told you so,” I said. Just started, and down to fifteen already.
The rest of the men stared in horror. A few were shaking.
One sobbed. Another screamed and ran for the front door. An older gentleman at my side shot the deserter in the back. Several men—that looked like they’d had the same idea—swallowed and got a hold of themselves.
I looked at the shooter. “What’s your name?”
He bowed reflexively. “Maki, Osamu, Deathwalker-san.”
Maki was his family name. His given name was Osamu. He’d impressed me. I actually wouldn’t mind if this guy survived. “Can I call you Osamu?”
He blinked and bowed deeper. “Hai!”
“Call me Caine,” I said. “You’ve earned the right.”
He straightened, pride shining in his eyes.
“Let’s go.” I led us down the hall, keeping an eye out for another trap. We reached the stairwell door and went through. The thing ought to have been locked, but the warlock wanted us coming after him, especially me. This was round three in the pissing contest we’d started back at Gloria’s bar.
Most of the men crowdied into the stairwell, and stared about suspiciously. The rest called in from the hall, demanding to know what was going on.
The stairwell distorted as if seen through a warped lens. The rising stairs bent into bizarre tangents that shifted as we watched. The brick walls swelled and contracted as if breathing. I put my palm against the closest wall. It felt warm, tingly with magic. I warmed the tat for my Dragon Sight, and felt as if a drill were ventilating my skull. After a moment, the pain dropped. I studied the area once more. The stairwell lingered like a superimposed image. We were also inside the gaping maw of a monstrous serpent, looking down its throat. Space was bending in such a way as to turn us into snake food.
I whispered. “Back up, fast.”
They didn’t have my sight, but they saw the gun I swung their way. Those around me spun and shoved back into the lobby. I didn’t have time to wait, and I doubted my usual weapons or tats were up to this. If I knew for sure I was about to die, I’d use my Kiss-My-Ass-Goodbye spell which would basically nuke half the city.
Yeah, I’m a vindictive son of a bitch.
The boys were wedged in the lobby door, and the roof of the snake’s mouth was descending. I could make out fangs coming together to either side of the door. The floor under my feet shifted, rippling, becoming a red tongue. The dimensional reality of the monster snake had yet to completely gel. There was still a chance to force the realities back apart.
I remembered the ghost dragon I’d met in Kellyn’s treasure room, back in Faerie. What had he said to me? Oh, yeah!
I am Wyrmmfrey of the Ice Clan. Call on me seven times, and this debt will be paid.
I warmed the tat for my Dragon Voice, barely tolerating the sensation of someone sawing me in half. My words boomed, “Wyrmmfrey of the Ice Clan, I call you to answer your debt.”
A blue-white swirl of mist formed before me, a serpentine shape that was as translucent as the stairwell. He fixed the silvery blaze of his eyes on me. His whiskered snout opened. “I answer, as I am pledged. What do you wish?”
“Tired of being a ghost? I’ve got a new body for you.” I gestured at the surrounding dimensional overlap.
His head swiveled. “Hmmm. Not bad. Not a dragon, but not bad. But I’m not going to owe you for this.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Think of it as an act of friendship.”
The dragon spirit snorted, glaring suspiciously at me. “No str
ings attached?”
“None,” I said. “Enjoy.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” The ghost expanded as billows of white, soaking into the altered space around me. The tongue under me froze in place. The brick walls were startled into motionlessness as well. The fangs were no longer moving, locking against each other. Then the monster snake retreated, its body possessed, hijacked by the dragon ghost. The stairwell became its usual self, running upward as originally laid out.
I called to the milling bodies still jamming the hallway door. “Danger’s over. Stop screwing around, and let’s go.”
I started up the stairs, staying close to the wall. The men behind me followed my example. A few floors up, one of the men opened a door only to be sucked in by screaming winds. Winds clawed us. I threw myself to the railing, hanging on with all my strength. The heavy fire door slammed shut. The wind died. I looked at the men with me.
Down to fourteen now.
I said, “Are you guys done being stupid?”
Osamu glared at his partners, then faced me, bowing deeply. “Apologies, Deathwalker-san.”
“It’s Caine, remember?”
“Hai, Deathwalker-san.”
I sighed. Japanese, go figure…
A few floors higher, the air wavered. I held up a hand in warning, pausing to take in the new threat. Like a 3-D projection, a piss-yellow image of the warlock appeared. His boots were a few inches off the floor, and he held the necklace in his hand. He grinned. “Caine, I’m not going to make it easy for you, but you do need to hurry.”
“Any special reason?” I asked.
His yellow glow expanded, giving me a better view of his surroundings. He was on the roof, on the helipad. Really, a rooftop fight, can you get any more cliché.
Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) Page 22