by Michael Todd
“I think I have a minute for you,” he said, strolling past her and cracking open the door.
Katie moved farther into the bathroom and waited.
“Don’t allow anyone in here for a few moments,” he told his guard, then glanced back at Katie. “Actually, make that twenty minutes.”
He closed the door and flipped the lock, straightening his collar before turning toward Katie. He reached down for his belt buckle and began to walk toward her, mumbling under his breath.
“I’m about to rip a new hole in this slut,” he whispered, licking his lips.
As soon as he was close enough, Katie reached forward quickly and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off the floor and then slamming him against the wall. Her eyes glowed red and she held tightly to his throat, making sure he couldn’t speak at all. He tried to open his mouth, but she tightened her grip and then punched him square in the gut.
The guard remained outside, nodding at the people who passed. He jumped slightly when the banging sounds started inside of the bathroom.
The guard shifted his stance. He had a slight grin on his face, thinking about the hot, hard sex going on in there. He knew his boss was a bit of freak, especially with the demon in him, but he hadn’t known he liked it like that.
To each his own. The guard definitely didn’t blame him. She was one hot piece of ass.
He heard another BANG as a body or bodies slammed into a wall, and tried to hide a smile. Damn, that man was punching it hard!
Inside the bathroom, though, it was a completely different story.
Katie turned and tossed the politician on the floor, standing over him as he pulled himself to his knees. He put his hands in front of him and whimpered, both his demon and his human self-cowering in their presence. Katie pulled back her arm and started to swing when the politician called out, putting his hand in the air.
“Please,” he begged, shaking. “Please don’t. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you some information—information you are going to want—in exchange for my life.”
“What is the information?” Katie said.
“No, fuck that,” Pandora exclaimed through Katie’s mouth. “This scumbag doesn’t deserve to live. Let me just rip his fucking throat out and eat that motherfucking demon inside him.”
“No.” Katie sighed. “We came here for a purpose, and I want to hear his information.”
The politician watched Katie nervously, listening to her demon and then her human self talking out of the same mouth.
He was blown away by that, unsure how it was even being done. He had a pretty strong demon, but he didn’t have the ability to do that.
“Look, I know you want this dirt bag.” Katie continued arguing with herself. “But let him go for now. We will get our revenge on him later. He is the one who brought the beast to LA, the demon breathing down our damn necks. I want revenge as much as the next person, but we can’t miss out on this information,” She sneered at the politician. “If it is any good. If not?” She drew a line across her throat.
“And then what?” Pandora argued. “He goes back and tells T’Chezz? That will do us a lot of good. We won’t make it out of this place alive.”
“That’s what we do,” Katie snapped angrily.
“Fine,” Pandora yelled. “Fine, spare his little pathetic human life.”
“Thank you,” he whined. “Thank you so much.”
“Shut up!” Katie slapped him across the face and he bounced against the wall, then fell back to the floor. “Give me the information before I lose my patience.”
“There is a hit out on Korbin’s Killers,” he told her frantically.
“When?” Katie hissed, getting down in his face.
“Uh… Uh…” He looked down at his watch. “In thirty-two minutes!”
“Fuck,” Katie screamed, slamming a foot into the wall and yanking it back out. She grabbed him by the hair. “So help me God, if one person on that base gets even a scratch, I won’t just fucking kill you, but I’ll let my demon kill you. Do you fucking understand me?”
“Yes!” he whimpered.
“Just fucking kill him,” Pandora insisted.
Katie dropped him. “A promise is a promise.”
“Yeah, but you only promised to spare the human,” Pandora said evilly.
“You’re right,” Katie agreed, narrowing her eyes. “And it will only take thirty seconds to pull that dirty motherfucker out of him.”
“Oooh, pleeeeease!” Pandora begged.
Katie smiled. “I actually think that it’s a fantastic idea.”
“NO,” the politician shrieked, putting up his hands as Katie started to walk toward him.
Her eyes flared red. “If you think that was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” She laughed, A monstrous hand reached down and pulled the screaming demon out of the politician’s body.
As soon as the demon left his body, the politician fainted.
Katie smiled, holding the demon in the air as Pandora devoured its soul. When the demon was gone and the echoes of his screams had dissipated, Katie straightened her dress and hair and cracked the bathroom door, closing it behind her.
“He might need a few minutes to get his energy back,” she told the guard. “He said he wants you in there in no less than ten minutes, no more than eleven. Got that?” She patted him on the chest. “Sorry, maybe another time?”
His look was forlorn as she walked away.
Katie moved fast through the crowd, trying to make it out to her car so she could get back to base and warn them in enough time. Her phone was dead now, dammit, and her earpiece had fallen out of her ear when she was dealing with the politician.
She felt almost frantic, like her family had been threatened. She wished she had just slit the man’s throat and been done with it, because he’d had no remorse.
Oh, he is a dead man walking, Pandora told her.
What do you mean? Katie asked.
I mean that he has had that demon in him for so long, his body needs its energy like a damn drug. I doubt he will survive three weeks.
Katie smiled as she made her way out of the building and to the valet. Good.
Chapter Twenty-One
Katie slammed her foot down on the gas pedal and hauled ass toward the base. She had to wait until she could slow down to get her phone plugged in, because cops had picked up her tail right after she jumped on the 15. She just went faster, though, leaving them in the dust behind her.
She sped down the 15, weaving between the cars to get to the base as fast as possible.
She looked ahead and saw a semi pulled off to the side of the road. She could hear the sirens getting louder so she veered to the shoulder, sped around the semi, and parked behind it, making herself invisible to everyone passing by. She sat there for a minute until all three cop cars went by, then pulled back out on the highway and u-turned it to head back north toward the Strip.
As soon as the dusty road came up on her left, Katie squealed her tires turning down it. She could see the compound in the distance.
The compound had been a small business park back in the day, but it had gone bust years before and the team had acquired it as their base.
All Katie knew was that her family was in there—the only people she had in the entire world—and they were going to be hit by an ambush, but had absolutely no idea. It had all been a setup from the first moment, but nobody had seen it.
She stopped at the old broken-down sign and shook her head in anger as she reached down and pulled off her heels. She tossed them in the back seat and grabbed the phone out of her purse.
She plugged it in, and as soon as it booted she dialed Korbin’s number and hit the speaker button. It rang a couple of times, but finally he picked it up.
“Katie,” he exclaimed. “Your comm went out.”
“I know,” she replied. “I had to get a little rough with the politician.”
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. No,
I mean you guys are in deep shit,” she told him. “The demons are coming for the team at the compound. They are supposed to hit you in less than ten minutes.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“That politician…he traded his life for the secret,” she said. “The secret was that Korbin’s Killers were going to be hit in thirty-two minutes, but that was back at the event. You need to batten down the hatches and get loaded for bear. Seriously, something bad—or several somethings—are going to hit us. I would have called earlier but I hadn’t set up Bluetooth and I there were police on my ass.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m a few minutes away. I can see you. This is serious. Get everyone to safety. As soon as I can I will be there, and I promise I will help handle this problem.”
“Just be safe,” Korbin told her. “We are going to be okay.”
Katie pressed End, threw the phone on the passenger seat, and floored it again. She was on a concrete road that headed from the 15 to the compound. The whole thing was open desert, so she couldn’t cut across without getting stuck. She leaned forward, slamming her hand on the steering wheel and pushing the car as fast as it could go while still maintaining control.
It was so damned typical that something like that would happen. Everything had been going so smoothly. She never—not in a million years—expected those words to come out of the politician’s mouth.
She shook her head and straightened her back, then noticed something strange half a mile ahead and off the road about a hundred yards. It was waving—shimmering, almost—and she could see demons appearing out of nowhere. She frowned and leaned forward for a better look.
“What the fuck is that?” Katie mused aloud.
That is a rift in the fabric of reality, Pandora informed her. A way for the demons to come and go from hell to Earth and back. It takes a fucking lot of power to open something like that. The last time it happened… Well, let’s just say God came crashing down.
Katie bit back a curse. I don’t have fucking time for the apocalypse. We have to shut it. How do you close it?
You have to block it, Pandora explained.
That’s a big fucking hole, Katie argued. Unless we throw something big through it, a damned army could come through.
We don’t have anything big. We are in the middle of the fucking desert. Unless you’ve got a piano in your pussy? Pandora wondered.
Why would I have a piano in my vagina? Katie yelled back, looking around for anything she could use.
“Well, there aren’t ever any dicks in it, so who the fuck knows what you store in there?”
Katie looked around her and realized that Pandora was right—there was nothing. Then she had an idea, albeit one that made her stomach cramp and her head ache.
“DAMMIT!” She sighed and shook her head. She couldn’t believe her luck. She twisted the wheel and pressed down hard on the gas, sending the car racing across the desert.
She swerved wildly, dodging the cacti and trying to keep the thing going fast enough that they wouldn’t get bogged down in the sand.
What are you doing? Pandora yelled.
Katie watched at least thirty snarling demons run from the rift toward the base. Among those thirty were three that seemed just as big as the one in LA, if not larger.
She’d had a hard enough time trying to take down one of those motherfuckers with Calvin. How the hell was she going to tackle a whole army of them? There was nothing normal about the situation, so all Katie could do was grip the steering wheel tightly and drive full steam ahead toward the rift.
She wouldn’t let the demons hurt her family.
“Holy shit,” Katie, gaping. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, a fourth seriously huge demon started to appear. The thing’s leg alone was as big as the demon in Los Angeles had been, and his aura rippled around him. Katie slammed her foot down on the gas and gunned it straight for him.
Fucking hell, bitch, Pandora screamed. You can’t go in there!
“I don’t plan to,” Katie yelled aloud.
“You are a crazy biiiiiiitch,” Pandora yelled in her brain as Katie was yelling aloud.
Katie aimed the car at the emerging demon and swung open the door, waiting until the last few seconds before throwing herself out of the car. She rolled across the sand, groaning and grunting as the car hit rocks and various desert flora.
She slid to a stop and looked up in time to see the car slam into the demon, both her car and the demon being thrown back through the rift.
The hole blinked out of existence as the massive demon went back to hell, Katie’s car going with him. She put her hands on the sand and growled as she watched sparks shoot from the rapidly closing rift.
The biggest demon was gone for now, but there were still a good number of them heading for the base. Katie couldn’t believe she had just jumped from her car before sending it plunging into the fiery depths of hell.
She was pretty sure there was nothing in her insurance plan that covered paranormal rifts.
Uh, Pandora? Katie pulled out a couple of cactus spines. Was that your brother?
Katie glanced down at her legs to examine the sand-rash that covered them. There was a rip in her very expensive couture dress, but she had to give it to Pandora—her dress was still firmly in place where it counted. Still, jumping from a car in an evening gown was probably not the best idea she’d ever had.
I think that was the fucker, Pandora admitted. He was taller than I remember.
Katie stood up and spitting out sand, Well, he owes me a motherfucking car.
With that she took off toward the base, trying to get there in time to help the others. Without a leader the demons would be slowed down, but not that much. They already had a head-start on her, so she had to pick up the pace.
“And not just any car,” Katie yelled in frustration. “That fucker owes me a brand-new Ferrari California T in California Blue with all the fucking bells and whistles.”
I’m sure he will be happy to oblige, Pandora snarked.
Okay, I’ll just take his head instead,” Katie growled, her eyes shining red.
That is something I can definitely get behind, Pandora yelled, boosting Katie’s speed. But first we have to save the others.
Korbin grabbed his phone and walkie-talkie, then hit the alarm and ran toward the stairs, taking them two at a time all the way to the personal quarters level. He burst through the door to find everyone standing in the living area.
He raced across the room to the stairwell door and slammed it shut, locking it tightly, then turned and let them see the anger boiling on his face.
He pointed at his men. “Eric, Jeremy, Damian, and Derek, I want you to go to all the entrances of this building and lock them down, including the roof hatch. Demons are on their way here. We don’t know how many yet, but they will be here any moment. Calvin, come with me. We have to get everyone else to safety.”
Korbin and Calvin ran down to the training level and through the secret passage into the workshop.
They didn’t even stop to say anything to Josh, who happened to be sticking something into the locked shelving. They just bolted up the stairs to the top floor where all the women were working.
Mamacita stood up from her chair and stared at the men. Something was clearly happening.
Korbin ran to the front doors and slammed them closed, then sealed them, locking everyone in the building. When he looked out the small window at the top of the steel door, he could see the demons running toward the compound. They were much closer than he’d figured they would be.
There were so many. At least thirty, and led by three very large demons. Korbin whipped around to face the girls, who had gathered around him.
He pointed to the stairs. “Everyone get to the basement. This is NOT a drill.”
Some of the girls whimpered and others shrieked, but everyone moved with haste, including Mamacita. Korbi
n stood at the top as Calvin ushered everyone down to the basement. Mamacita was the last to leave the manufacturing floor.
“Is that everyone?” Korbin asked her.
“Yes.” She nodded and headed down the steps.
Korbin slammed the large heavy door they had just installed and sealed it shut, then stood there for a moment to collect himself before heading down the stairs. The girls clung to each other with fear on their faces.
“The enemy, which are demons, have found our base and they are attacking,” he explained. “You should be safe, but you have to stay down here, out of the fight. Understand me?”
“What if they break through?” one of the girls asked.
“Then you grab whatever you can and you fight with everything that you have,” Korbin answered. “Joshua’s metal will hurt them, and if you cut off their heads they die instantly. Don’t be a hero. Help your sisters, help each other, and do the best you can to survive. We are going to keep them away from here the best that we can.”
Korbin turned to Joshua as the girls went off to Mamacita, looking for comfort. He knew this was a shock to a lot of them, but he knew also that Mamacita would work hard to keep them all in one piece. They were his responsibility, though, and he had to make sure they stayed safe.
“Do you have any new weapons?” he asked Josh.
“Yes, over here,” he replied, leading them over to cabinets. “Take whatever you need.”
Korbin smiled at Joshua. “Thanks.”
They grabbed a few extra knives and a couple of swords before they headed through the tunnel toward the base. Korbin shoved a knife into Joshua’s hand and grabbed his shoulder.
He looked him in the eye for a moment, and then at the women.
“Make your family proud, Joshua,” he told the young man. “Fight if you have to. Defend your home, your birthright, and the women here, who are part of our team.”
“I will,” he told Korbin confidently.
Korbin nodded and glanced back at Mamacita one last time.