by P. N. Elrod
It was not looking good for the home team. God’s Wrath never hesitated to take responsibility for the demons they killed, but they were never willing to give up the individual members who’d participated in the murders, making it almost impossible for anyone to be prosecuted. Unfortunately, since Barbie and I would know damn well who to point the finger at if Melanie turned up dead, I suspected we were about to become collateral damage.
I really hoped Adam had enough information to work with and was even now speeding to the Sherwood house to enact a rescue. Too bad Lugh hadn’t been able to communicate that we were up against an armed, organized mob. If Adam came alone, he could end up roasting right beside Rick or Melanie.
The ride to the suburbs took forever, but at the same time didn’t take long enough. The vehicle in which I was being transported came to a stop, and the sound of doors sliding open told me I was in a van. Rough hands grabbed me under my arms, and when I tried to struggle, I was rewarded by a blow to the head that took all the fight out of me.
I was only semiconscious as I was dragged out of the van and then slung over someone’s shoulder. My captors didn’t speak, but I could hear some more scuffling, then the muffled sound of sobbing. My heart squeezed in sympathy for Melanie, even though my own situation wasn’t looking much brighter.
I heard a series of locks being opened, and then my captor began to descend, his feet pounding down a set of wooden stairs. I suppressed a whimper as I caught the reek of old smoke.
I was unceremoniously dumped onto the cement floor with a teeth-rattling thump. The hood was pulled from my head, and I opened my still-stinging eyes to a sight every bit as horrifying as I’d imagined.
I was in a barren, unfinished basement, lit only by a series of thick pillar candles that lined three of the four walls. An enormous blackened fireplace was set into the fourth wall. My guess was it was supposed to look like one of those medieval castle fireplaces, where you could roast a whole deer on a spit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a deer they were planning to roast tonight. A thick iron pole rose from a bed of concrete at the back of the fireplace, wood and kindling piled at its base.
I struggled to sit up—not easy when you’re bound hand and foot. No one helped me, but no one tried to stop me, either. Glancing around, I saw Rick, Melanie, and Barbie, all similarly bound and gagged. We were surrounded by figures in black hoods and robes, at least ten of them crammed into the small basement. Several of them held Tasers pointed at us, and one of them had a gun. Not good odds.
Melanie was sobbing so hard she was having trouble breathing around the gag. Barbie was pale and wide-eyed with fear. But Rick’s eyes were alive with calculation as he took stock of the situation. The demon had clearly not transferred back into Melanie during the attack, and I wondered if we could take advantage of the fact. God’s Wrath were expecting Melanie to be possessed, but they weren’t necessarily expecting it of Rick.
One of the Taser-wielding loonies stepped forward. Before I had a clue what was about to happen, he’d shot Melanie full of electricity. She screamed from behind the gag, her body collapsing to the floor, where she lay twitching spastically.
“She is free of the Spawn of Satan,” the loony intoned.
Well, that was certainly one way to determine if someone was possessed. If Melanie’s demon had still been in residence, she would not have been twitching. One of the other hooded figures suddenly rushed forward and grabbed Melanie, wrapping her into an embrace.
“Oh thank God!” Scott Sherwood’s voice said from beneath the hood.
“What about that one?” another hooded figure asked, and this time I recognized Patsy’s voice as she pointed at Rick. She sounded strangely hopeful. I supposed she was really eager to have someone to burn in that fireplace.
A lot of things happened at once then.
The demon burst free of its bonds and charged the man who was about to Taser him. The Taser went off, but its probes sailed harmlessly over Rick’s head as he rode the homicidal nutcase to the floor.
I realized the shit was about to hit the fan, and that if we had any hope of all of us surviving until Adam could arrive with the cavalry, we couldn’t afford to have any demons go down for the count. Which meant that, despite the unpleasant side effects that were sure to follow, I had to let Lugh take control again.
It was a calculated risk. If Rick and Lugh lost this fight—which seemed likely, considering we were badly outnumbered and the bad guys had Tasers—I was announcing to everyone involved that I was possessed, which would make me a candidate to join Rick at the stake. But though I’d once thought of myself as selfish and cowardly, I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing while man and demon were barbecued.
Lugh’s demon strength was easily enough to let him tear loose from the ropes on my wrists and ankles. My flesh got torn up pretty good in the process, too, but Lugh cut me off from the pain. I was now nothing more than an observer in my own body, seeing and hearing the action without actually feeling anything, at least not physically.
Rick’s attack came as a surprise to the God’s Wrath mob; Lugh’s came as a total shock. I mean really, who’s going to expect an exorcist to be possessed, of all people?
Lugh plowed into one of the Taser-wielding guys, his momentum carrying them both into yet another one. All three of us went down, with Lugh on top. The man on the bottom cracked the back of his head against the cement floor and didn’t move. I told myself I hoped he wasn’t dead, but I had to admit there was a spiteful side of me that didn’t much care.
Lugh wrested the Taser from the hand of the man he’d knocked down, crushing the barrel with one strong hand. Without a Taser, the guy wasn’t a threat anymore, so Lugh leapt to his feet.
Rick had taken down two of the hooded figures, but by the time Lugh was fully vertical, Scott Sherwood had shoved his still bound and gagged daughter behind him and lunged forward, jabbing his Taser into Rick’s back. The demon collapsed. Between them, Lugh and Rick had incapacitated four of the fanatics, but once Rick went down, the remaining six were able to focus all their attention on Lugh.
Six against one is never good odds, even when you’re a demon. But Lugh is a very clever demon. Plus, he knew he didn’t have to defeat them—just delay them.
Several of our attackers had already fired their Tasers and missed, which meant they had to either stop and reload, or try to use the Tasers at close range as stun guns. No one seemed real eager to get close. Imagine that!
Lugh grabbed at the closest figure, his hand closing around an upper arm. The hood fell down, revealing Patsy Sherwood’s face. Her teeth were bared in a snarl, her eyes narrowed with hatred, her cheeks flushed an angry red. She swung her Taser at Lugh, but Lugh hit her arm so hard it knocked the Taser from her grip and sent it skittering into the fireplace. He then pulled her up against him, using her body as a shield against the others.
I was almost beginning to feel optimistic about our chances. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near as petite as Barbie, and Patsy Sherwood’s body was an inadequate shield for a woman of my height.
The fanatics who were still standing spread out, making it hard for Lugh to keep an eye on all of them at once. Two of them fired their Tasers at the same moment. Lugh used Patsy to intercept the probes from one Taser, but that left his back open. Patsy screamed, but neither Lugh nor I had time to feel even a flicker of satisfaction before the probes from the other Taser took us out of the action.
My optimism turned to bone-chilling fear as Lugh fell. I’d come damn close to being burned at the stake once before, and the situation was looking just as grim now. One of the wackos grabbed Rick’s limp body under the arms and started dragging him toward the fireplace. Another bent to grab me.
Everyone—including me—was so focused on the upcoming bonfire that we didn’t notice the arrival of the cops until Adam bellowed for everyone to freeze.
* * *
Turned out the Sherwoods had been on a police watch list as possible God’s Wrath “enforcer
s,” so when Adam had heard the address, he’d immediately had a good idea what might be happening. He’d managed to call in enough heavily armed cops to convince the entire gang to surrender without a fight. Scott Sherwood was too shell-shocked to talk as he was led away in handcuffs, but Patsy was practically foaming at the mouth, shouting disjointed passages of scripture while hurling accusations at me and Rick.
Melanie managed to shuffle her way over to Rick’s inert body and brush her bound hands against his cheek before the cops dragged her away from what Patsy claimed was a dangerous demon. I knew that the demon had taken advantage of that brief contact to move back into Melanie. It wasn’t a perfect solution, because the cops would be sure to examine us all for demonic possession before any of us was allowed to go home, and Melanie’s demon still wasn’t legal. But I was pretty sure I could convince Adam to give her a chance to “escape” before an exorcist got a chance to examine her aura.
As the rest of the cops ushered Barbie, Melanie, and Rick up the stairs, treating them with all the caution they were trained to use against potentially dangerous demons, Adam came to kneel beside me. He’s capable of a world-class glower, and he was giving it to me full force at the moment. Funny how he always gets so testy when he thinks I’m endangering the life of his king.
The Taser shot was beginning to wear off, and Lugh was still in control. I felt him force my lips into an imitation of a smile.
“Don’t be angry with Morgan over this,” he slurred. “It’s not her fault.”
Adam narrowed his eyes, his glare becoming even more furious, which was an impressive feat. “How about you?” he growled. “Can I be angry with you ? What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
And Lugh—brave, powerful king of the demons that he was—passed control back to me rather than answer.
DOUBLE DEAD
A NIGHT TRACKER NOVELLA
Cheyenne McCray
DEDICATION
To Daniel. All I can say is thank God for you.
Welcome to New York City’s Underworld
PRESENT DAY
Dark Elves/Drow: We rock.
Demons: I am so through with Demons.
Dopplers: Paranorms who can shift into one specific animal as well as into their human form.
Fae : Should have paid attention during our last case if you wanted to know all of the different races.
Gargoyles: Freaking ugly. And dangerous.
Incubis: No Adonis could begin to compare to these paranorms. Stay. Away.
Light Elves: Mirror, mirror, how art we better than all?
Metamorphs: Slimy paranorms who can take on the persona and appearance of any human and almost any paranorm. And not in a good way. Metamorphs have no redeeming qualities. None.
Necromancers: Exactly what you think. They talk to and raise the dead. Creeeeepy.
Shadow Shifters: Paranorms with the ability to shift from human form into shadows.
Shifters: Can transform into any animal of their choosing as well as take their human form.
Succubis: Promise sex good enough to sell your soul for. One word: don’t.
Vampires: There’s something with these guys that we’re missing.…
Werewolves: Can take wolf form almost any time, but at the full moon they go nuclear.
Zombies: I do not want to talk about Zombies. You can’t make me.
CHAPTER 1
Like a metal ball in one of those old pinball machines Rodán kept at the nightclub, the earth spun. Whirled. Bounced. Pinged. Every time I thought I would rush down into oblivion, something hard would smack me back into a spinning orbit.
What was happening to me?
I couldn’t think clearly. My mind wouldn’t stop spinning like that metal ball. Where was I? Why did I feel like that tiny pinball had smashed me like a wrecking ball? My whole body was one big mass of pain. I felt fluid trickling from my nose and over my lips, and tasted blood.
“Look at me, Tracker.” At the sound of the male’s voice I started. Could a voice be hard and cold, yet amused at the same time? Apparently it could. “Now, Tracker .”
I opened my eyes and tried to focus on what I saw in front of me. The images of three human males were wavering and trying to merge into one. Finally they became one and my head spun a little less. The male was dressed like an NYPD officer, and he was holding a baton streaked with blood. My blood.
The smell of alyssum, like newly mown hay, meant there was a Metamorph close. The strength of the smell told me there was more than one. At least two, maybe three. Despite my muddled state, I was pretty sure the male I was staring at was a Metamorph. Or rather I was looking at the reflection of the human whose appearance the Metamorph had taken.
“Thought I’d get the beating out of the way.” The male snapped his baton, then returned it to its place on his duty belt. “You’ll be less likely to draw out a game that you’ll lose … Nyx of the Dark Elves and Night Tracker.”
Connect the dots, Nyx.
I knew I was in my human form because I sensed it was still daylight and I felt the differences in my body. How did the Metamorphs know how to find me during the day or even know that I was a Night Tracker?
Night Trackers patrolled their territories to make sure scum like Metamorphs who broke the laws were eliminated or taken off the street and put into the detention center. The Metamorph’s or other paranorm’s punishment depended on the severity of the crime.
Then bits and pieces of memory came back to me as my thoughts began to clear. Chills rolled through my body.
I’d been waiting in my apartment for Adam to drop by for a little afternoon recreation. But when he got there, something had seemed wrong, out of place. I’d been so excited to see Adam, thinking about his adorable tousled hair and his boyish smile, that at first I didn’t notice that he didn’t smell of coffee and leather like usual.
Without bothering to close the door, he grabbed me to him and kissed me—
He’d tasted like grass. Dry, dust-coated grass.
Not Adam. Not Adam!
I stared at the man while thoughts of how they had captured me flashed through my mind. My stomach churned.
When he kissed me, my first reaction had been to jerk away from the being that was not my Adam. I wanted to puke from kissing what I realized was a Metamorph.
Realized too late.
He had a gun to my temple before I could blink. The gun didn’t faze me. Even in my human form I could have taken out a single Metamorph.
Eight more Metamorphs rushed through the open doorway. In my Drow form, with my Drow strength, my dragon-clawed daggers, and my elemental magic, I could have taken on all of them. Even in my human form I would have been hard to beat.
Right now I wanted to shake my head, shake off the memory. But my head hurt too much to move it. Metamorphs had gotten me. Metamorphs.
They’d caught me completely off guard, everything amplified by my shock and revulsion because I’d just kissed a being who was not Adam. A disgusting Metamorph. The fact that the being had managed to get that close to me, without my realizing what he really was, had added to the shock.
Before I’d been able to call the air to aid me, one of the Metamorphs slapped a cloth over my nose. That was the last thing I remembered before this moment.
The fog in my mind started to clear. Thoughts of how I’d been captured and what was happening now raced through my head so fast that I was almost dizzy from them. What were the Metamorphs doing? What did they want? Where was Adam?
I glared at the Metamorph. I wanted my hands around him in front of me so badly I could almost feel myself squeezing his neck. Feel it snapping. I attempted to lunge forward but my arms jerked against chains and metal cuffs bit into my wrists. The legs of the chair I was in scraped the floor as I struggled. I snarled and tried to lash out with my feet. They wouldn’t move. Metal ankle cuffs dug into my skin.
When I looked down at my shackled ankles, my long, tangled black hair fell over my eyes. Blood drippe
d from my nose onto my Dior pale cream blouse and slacks. My clothing was torn, bloody, filthy. My Pradas were missing, leaving my feet bare.
When I fisted my hands, the tension caused me to fully take in the fact that they’d beaten me while I was out cold.
The elements. I could take care of this whole situation and be done with it. A small cyclone would do.
My first shot at controlling the elements told me that the handcuffs that bound me were treated with elemental magic. My second attempt just reaffirmed that fact.
The specially made cuffs weren’t supposed to affect Trackers. They’d all been altered to recognize every Tracker in New York City so that our magic wouldn’t be affected. How had these Metamorphs been able to contain me? I couldn’t use the elements at all.
I frowned in concentration. Maybe I had to shift into my Drow half before the cuffs would have no effect on me and I could use my elements again. I was Nyx Ciar, paranorm PI during the day. After sundown I would be Nyx of the Night Trackers.
It wouldn’t be long now, though. I sensed that nightfall would be soon—none of them would be getting out of this place alive once I was through with them.
My hair was in my eyes and stuck to the blood on my cheeks when I raised my head.