Marked (Shadow City Book 1)

by C M Blackwood

  After a few seconds, her screams stopped, and I knew that the demon was clutching her too tightly for any sound to escape her. The worst part was the sound of her breaking bones. She couldn’t cry out, but the expression of pure torment on her pretty face was enough to gut me. I held my breath in horror, though I didn’t realize I was doing it.

  I watched as she was crushed to death right in front of me. Eventually, blood began to pour from her eyes, nose and mouth. She choked on it, blinking painfully. She opened and closed her mouth, unable to breathe, in utter agony. I exhaled heavily when it was over, when her head dropped to the side and I knew she was finally dead. When she was out of pain and misery.

  The demon surveyed the young dead woman for a moment, as if he were examining a plaything he was interested in. Then, he opened his mouth wide, his jaw looking as if it were dislodging like an anaconda’s. He put the woman into his mouth, then chewed her thoroughly, traumatizing me further with more sounds of crunching bones. I looked away at that point. The girl was gone. It didn’t matter anymore.

  Kristoff had watched this whole scene with a smile on his face. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I just stared at the floor, breathing shallowly, trying to think but unable to focus my thoughts. I felt like I was drunk and someone had just given me a complicated math problem to solve. Only thing about that was, I forgot everything I’d ever learned about math as soon as soon as I graduated high school. If it was any more complicated than adding numbers on a calculator, you could be fairly sure it was out of my league.

  I was beginning to understand that this was, too. I’d been foolish enough to ask myself how I could save that young woman – and then I was forced to witness her ghastly death like a helpless child, standing alone with my shoes untied.

  I could feel the demon’s eyes on me. The power of his stare was like a heavy boulder, settled on top of me, crushing me into the floor. Crushing me – like his big red fist would crush me soon. I’d had a lot of ideas about how I’d go out as a cop in Shadow City, but this one sure never made the list. I tried to suppress a shiver, but it won out. What a fucking way to go.

  Kristoff came over and grabbed my arm again. Damn it, I was getting so sick of the manhandling. I shot him a furious glance, and he frowned severely, squeezing my bicep harder.

  “Until we meet again, my little snack,” the demon practically cooed. “I have a very fast metabolism – so I’m sure I’ll be hungry by then.”

  I wouldn’t allow myself to shiver and shake while Kristoff had his hand on me. I steeled my muscles, making my face a blank mask as he pushed me across the flaming room and up the stairs. I didn’t know where we were going – but it didn’t really seem to matter anymore.

  ***

  Kristoff marched me off to a dark, chill room that looked like it used to be an isolation chamber for mentally unstable or unruly patients. There was a lonely straitjacket lying on the floor, and the walls were padded. But there was the addition of chains attached to the walls, which I knew Kristoff must have placed there.

  “Did you enjoy seeing how you’ll die?” he asked me cheerfully. “It’s something of a privilege, you know – most people have no idea how or when they’ll die. You know exactly how, and you know it’s going to be fairly soon. I won’t tell you precisely when, because I want there to be some kind of suspense involved. You know what Alfred Hitchcock said – ‘There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.’”

  Yeah, that was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one who was about to be pulverized by a demon from hell. I’d say that was pretty goddamn terrifying.

  “All right, then,” he said, his voice growing gruff. He’d had enough of me for now. He probably wanted to get back to all his evil plotting and stuff. After all, who was an insignificant plebeian like me to interrupt him?

  He grabbed hold of my arms and dragged me towards the wall. He lifted the manacles attached to the ends of the chains, then slapped them around my wrists. They were cold, heavy and tight, and I knew I wouldn’t have a chance of wriggling out of them.

  “I have things to do,” he said roughly, clearly having become bored with me. “I’ll invite you to take this time to regret every mistake you’ve ever made – first and foremost, having shot me in the arm. Enjoy your final hours, human.”

  He showed that cruel grin, and the last of my hope – if I’d had any left – burned away to ashes at the bottom of my heart. He walked out of the room, snapping the door shut after him. I was left in total darkness, chained to the wall, with nothing to think of but my grisly, imminent death. If I’d ever been low, I certainly hadn’t been lower than this. This was down-in-the-sewers, trudging-in-shit low. I tried to kindle some kind of spark to keep me burning, to keep me fighting to survive – but I knew it was over. I sank down to the cold floor, shivering with fear and loneliness, the last of my light fading like a blown-out candle.

  Chapter 15

  I’d rested my head against the wall, having sunk into a horror-induced stupor that involved piecing through random events in my life. They didn’t all necessarily have the same weight or significance. Yeah, I did think about the time I got shot and nearly died, but I also thought about the time I bought a clown fish and named it Norman. I even recalled surly old Mr. Tanaka, my crotchety Japanese neighbor, with something resembling fondness.

  And I thought of my parents. I even made myself think of their names, Carl and Annie Ford. When I was a kid, they’d been nameless, practically faceless in the midst of my pot-fueled teenage rebellion. And then, they were gone before I really had the chance to get to know them as people. But they had been people, people with likes and dislikes, habits and traits that were all their own.

  My father had been a quiet man, a bank manager who left at eight every morning and came home at six every evening. He had bad digestion and often requested boiled chicken for supper. He liked the daily crossword and was a faithful viewer of Jeopardy!.

  But he was also the one who had taught me to ride a bike. And when I fell out of an oak tree when I was six and broke my leg, he carried me upstairs to bed every night until they took my cast off.

  My mother was a very vocal woman, much more outspoken than my father. Which made sense, I guess. I must have gotten it from somewhere. She was a talented piano teacher, and my memories of childhood evenings were often set to the background of her music, which she played on an old Steinway in the living room.

  I liked to dance when I was a kid – I know, go figure, I certainly don’t seem like the ballet type – and my mother brought me to each and every lesson, sitting with the other parents at the side of the large room, never really talking to any of them because she’d never had much in common with other people. I know, I know – it’s starting to seem like the reason my mother and I didn’t get along was that we were too damned alike.

  So yeah, Mom brought me to my lessons, and I remember the tears in her eyes at my first recital. She even brought me a bouquet of pink roses.

  Anyway, this was the basic substance of my thoughts as I lay there chained on the floor with my eyes closed. But all of a sudden, I heard a sound that made me look up.

  I thought it was Kristoff coming to bring me back to Balam, and I was literally about to scream. Now, I think it’s obvious that I’m not usually a “scream-when-faced-with-danger” kind of girl, but the truth was that I had become utterly horrified with the idea of my impending doom. So, in this one instance, I think a good primal scream of terror may have been warranted.

  And yet, when I looked up, I saw that it wasn’t Kristoff. Not by a long shot.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes, at first. I’d given up hope hours ago. I’d been scared to die, but I’d been prepared for it. And yet now, here I was, huddled on this freezing cold floor – staring at Risa. She was gazing at me with a stricken expression, her eyes wide and shining in the light from the corridor.

  She flew to me in a single stride, kneeling down before me and taking my wrists in her gentle ha
nds. With supreme strength, she broke the manacles that held me, freeing me. I rubbed my wrists in wonder, hardly able to believe it. I looked at her as if she were a ghost.

  “How did you – how did you . . .?”

  And that’s as articulate as I was able to be.

  She took my hands in hers, rubbing them soothingly. I closed my eyes, and my breath hitched. She was here. I wasn’t going to die . . .?

  “I don’t really know how to explain it,” she said. “I was frozen for hours. But all I could think of was you, all I could think of was that bastard hurting you – and suddenly, I found that I could move. It’s not much of an explanation, but it’s the only one I have. I just couldn’t let him hurt you.”

  I was mentally and physically exhausted from hours of being chained up in a cold room, with nothing to think of but my approaching death. I had no will left to be strong. I was stripped bare, and I was utterly vulnerable. I fell forward into Risa’s arms, clutching her tightly, seeking the safety of her embrace.

  “I’m here, Dani,” she whispered in my ear. “His thrall is broken, and I won’t be separated from you again. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through – but it’s going to be all right. Nothing can keep us apart anymore.”

  I lay heavily against her, and she held me close. I was safe. I wasn’t going to die. I just held onto her, craving the comfort of her nearness, her scent, her skin. Just the fact that she was here with me. I buried my face in her neck, breathing shallowly, and she ran her fingers through my hair.

  “Thank you for coming,” I murmured against her skin, twining my fingers through hers. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  She pulled back a little, staring into my face in disbelief. Her eyes were illuminated in the glow from the corridor. “You don’t have to thank me,” she said simply. “I’ll always come for you. I’ll never leave you, Dani. No matter what.”

  She nuzzled my face protectively, and I sighed in contentment. But then came the words that sort of messed with my inner peace and settling chakras and all that jazz.

  “I have to end him,” she told me.

  Another sigh from me, this one a little heavier and grumpier. “I figured as much,” I replied, clinging to her for a moment more. Then I let go, reluctantly relinquishing the last of that peaceful moment.

  “You can wait outside for me,” she said, squeezing my fingers reassuringly.

  Now, as tempting as that sounded – I’d be damned if I was going to wait outside while my lady terminated the bastard who’d been about to do me in. I was all in.

  “Nah,” I replied, nuzzling her back and catching her lips in a quick kiss. “I’m with you.”

  “I figured as much,” she said, echoing my own response. Then she reached back into her belt and pulled out my gun, handing it over to me. My eyes lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. With Reese’s peanut butter trees and new bikes and everything.

  I held my gun at the ready, giving Risa an affirmative nod. She inclined her head in response, then turned to walk out of the room. We started left down the uber-creepy abandoned-hospital corridor, and I tried not to look through the open doorways at the deathly-ill young women hooked up to IV drips. But I could smell their blood. The blood that Kristoff drained from them, keeping them in a constantly semi-comatose state. That fucking monster. I’d just decided I was really glad we were on our way to kill the bastard.

  “I think it’s down here,” Risa whispered to me. “I can smell him.”

  Oh, yeah. I’d never really thought about that – vampire tracking and all that stuff. I realized now there were a lot of things I’d never thought about. Like, looking at Risa now as we walked down the corridor, I had a sudden thought. She was going to look like this forever: absolutely stunning and perfect. But I was going to keep aging, keep getting those damned gray hairs. And I was already thirty. Would she still want me when I started to look older?

  I know, I know, it was a really weird time to be having these thoughts. I’d just had a near-death experience, and we were on our way to kill an extremely evil vampire. But you can never really decide when your brain will start thinking about these sorts of things, can you?

  I attempted to shove all of my incredibly ill-timed thoughts away, though admittedly, they’d left a sour spot in the pit of my stomach. I just followed Risa silently, holding my gun in position and trying not to look like I was having a total Teenage Drama Moment.

  Risa halted just before an open doorway, leaning her back against the wall, clearly listening in on what was going on inside the room. Though my hearing was nowhere near as good as hers, I tried to do the same. Thanks to the silence of the building, I managed to catch most of Kristoff’s part of a telephone conversation that was taking place.

  “Everything’s on schedule,” he said. “The package will be arriving tonight. Don’t worry about your bills – you’ll get your cut.”

  Risa looked at me and nodded. It was time to boogie.

  She entered the room first, and I went in on her heels, my gun in position. It was a fairly plain room, your basic office, a desk pushed up under the windows, a few lamps, and that was pretty much it. The only thing that stood out was the surveillance equipment. There were monitors all along the wall, looking out from every angle of the building’s exterior, and in from every angle of its interior. If Kristoff had been paying attention, he would have seen us coming, but he was obviously too preoccupied with his phone call.

  He looked shocked to see us. He ended his call with a severe frown, laying the phone on his desk and looking at us as if we were naughty children who’d left the time-out corner before the grown-ups told us we were allowed to.

  “My, my,” he said gravely, surveying us with a dark expression. “What have we here? A vampire who managed to break her thrall – and a treat for a demon out of her chains? I have to say, this simply won’t do. I had a very specific plan in mind, and you are inexcusably messing with it.”

  Risa’s canines elongated to sharp points, and she gnashed them at her foe. I wasn’t going to lie, that was sexy as hell. Despite the gravity of the situation, I found myself lusting after her. My vampire lover – the only woman who’d ever managed to capture both my body and soul. But I clamped my thighs together dutifully and straightened my aim on my gun.

  “You thought you’d kidnap my mate,” Risa growled, taking a bold step towards Kristoff, “and do God knows what to her – and I would just stand by and do nothing? Thrall or no, it wasn’t going to happen, asshole. Now it’s time to pay the price.”

  For the first time in his dealings with Risa, I thought I saw a flicker of fear pass through Kristoff’s unholy eyes. It even looked like he was contemplating some sort of escape. But of course, there was none. He was in a closed room, and I was blocking the exit.

  Risa lunged at him without further prelude. And then – I witnessed a fight that I certainly didn’t see coming. I mean, I was expecting fangs and biting and brawling and all that, but what I saw was full-on magic. I was definitely feeling more uninformed by the minute.

  Strange ethereal entities suddenly appeared around Risa and Kristoff, and I couldn’t explain for the life of me where they had come from. They were translucent, and it seemed almost as if they were made of mist. It was straight-up like when the ghosts popped up around Harry Potter in the graveyard in the fourth movie. Yeah, yeah. I know I’ve referenced Harry Potter before. Just because one is hella cool does not mean that one can’t be a little nerdy.

  Anyway, there these things were, massive silver serpents around Risa, and lightning-swift black hawks around Kristoff. The two opponents just stared at each other for what seemed like a very long moment; and then, without warning, the serpents and the hawks dove at each other. Risa and Kristoff hissed at one another, then sprang forward, lashing out with their powerful limbs.

  Risa’s strength was quick to make itself known, asserting almost immediate dominance over Kristoff. She circled a hand around his throat and threw him into the wall, hiss
ing viciously when he crunched against the plaster, leaving a huge crater in his wake as he fell to the floor.

  He hissed back, and one of his hawks caught one of Risa’s serpents by its forked tongue, pulling the muscular organ out at the root and spitting it onto the floor. The serpent cried out in pain, and Risa paused, reaching a hand towards her mouth.

  It seemed that the damage inflicted on these foggy entities could be felt by their creators. Or at least, I hoped it was just the sensation. Not that feeling like your tongue was ripped out is very cool – but actually having it ripped out seems like a different story altogether.

  I watched Risa’s mouth for signs of blood, and when I determined that there was none, I began to be convinced of the fact that she was still in possession of her tongue. Which I was glad of, mostly for her sake of course, but there was also the fact that soon I was hoping she would kiss me with that thing.

  It’s the little things that get you through a mega-stressful vampire battle. You know, like imagining your girlfriend’s tongue being shoved down your throat.

  Don’t judge me. We all have our coping mechanisms.

  Fortunately, the blow to her serpent didn’t cause Risa to hesitate for long. Soon, she was back with another badass hiss, and she flew at Kristoff, knocking him right off his feet. Meanwhile, her serpents’ aggression increased threefold, and they began to wrap themselves around Kristoff’s hawks, decapitating half of them in the space of a few seconds. Kristoff roared in pain, and I grinned smugly.

  Risa was just pulling her hand back, presumably to deliver the same death-blow she’d once dealt Boris the Incredible Vampire Hulk – when suddenly she stopped. I frowned, unable to understand what was wrong. Kristoff was just lying underneath her, not even moving. How could he have hurt her?