Magic Revenge: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spirit War Chronicles Book 2)

by Stephen Allan

But in truth, this development terrified me. The demons must have felt some level of confidence if they were going to bring our battle out to the human realm by capturing a cop. They had to have known that if an authority figure talked about demons, then a terrifying message would spread. One they would spread themselves.

  “Sonya Ferguson!” the Arachtar roared, its voice seeming to carry across the land.

  “Aww, you remembered my name. Most are bad with names, but I figured if you’re going to come knocking at the door of my home, you better remember my name.”

  “Get her! Take her alive!”

  Like a stampede of angry buffalo, the demons roared after me. But I quickly discovered the demons on the ground were not the only forces chasing me. A loud roar erupted from… a motherfucking lion?

  Sure enough, from around the corner, taking its time pacing as the demons chased after me, a lion with a thick, red mane and deep red eyes stared at me, growling and roaring to the heavens.

  “Scar, you’re supposed to be dead!” I said as I took out a couple of demons with Ebony and Ivory. “Well, then again, I guess it would make sense for you to be here. Killing your own brother and trying to kill your nephew? Cold, dude.”

  The lion roared with such a fury that it froze me in place—literally. I had to concentrate on breaking this binding spell as about four demons bounded within a dozen feet of me. I didn’t completely break the spell, for my legs remained planted to the ground, but I got my arms free and took out the four demons with ease.

  “Or are you Aslan’s evil dark brother? Oh, what a twist that would be!”

  One demon trampled over his fallen comrade, lunging for me, but that just made my job easy. Ivory launched a bullet and it landed square in the left eye of the demon. I wasn’t sure that that would kill it, but a shot from Ebony into its skull sure did. The remaining demons paused to assess their options, giving me the chance to recover from the binding spell.

  One demon teleported, but by now, that move was so predictable it was like watching Brady shrug when I cornered him in an argument. I threw my elbow back, staggered the demon, and fired a bullet from Ebony over my shoulder without even looking. The thud that followed confirmed that I’d killed him. Four left.

  Two teleported behind me, and though I hit one, another one grabbed my left arm and spun me, throwing me against a nearby tree. I slumped to the ground. The demon lion’s roar would have paralyzed me if I had not focused on blocking it.

  “Is that any way to treat a lady,” I said as the demon advanced.

  Still squatting on the ground, I shot Ebony and Ivory simultaneously, one bullet hitting his head, another his chest. I staggered up, a bit sore and in pain from the throw, and stretched my arms out. At the same time, I fired a round to the demon who had thrown me, and apologized, saying, “That’s not what I meant when I said take a shot.”

  “You bitch, do you have any idea what awaits you,” one of the two remaining demons growled from a relatively safe distance for him—about twenty feet, behind a tree. “Fight us and hell will not show mercy to you.”

  “That’s cute, because it’s not hell that needs mercy, it’s you.”

  I walked forward, hardly worrying, knowing that the demon’s ability to teleport behind me was a trick that I had long figured out. Suddenly, one appeared in front of me, too close to me for me to raise my guns, and tried to punch me in the gut.

  I say tried, because though I didn’t have the use of my guns, I still had my Krav Maga and Muay Thai skills. I drilled a sharp right knee into his groin, and wouldn’t you know it, it hurt getting hit in the balls for demons as much as it did real men. I paused for a few seconds, content to let him suffer in misery.

  “Lesson from a woman. If you want to make a move on her, don’t touch her until she gives you a signal.”

  I then unloaded a round from Ivory into the demon’s skull and it vanished. One regular demon left, plus the lion.

  “Kill her!” the Arachtar roared. Oh, right, him too.

  Then a squad of three thicker demons, with knives in their hands, dropped from the trees. The lion paced in front of them.

  OK, this, admittedly, was something of a problem. I could take two at a time, but more might be a little bit above my pay grade.

  “Aww, this is no fun,” I said, but I was actually getting worried. Also, the hell is Carsis?

  But then two of the demons fell as gunshots echoed in the air. All of us—the remaining two knife-wielding demons, the lion, the Arachtar, and myself—looked over to see the female officer with her gun out. She stood and quickly ran behind a tree.

  “Danke! Ich schulde dir ein Bier!” I said, thanking the officer and telling her I would buy a beer later.

  “You are welcome!” he said in a thick German accent, and I just laughed as I shot dead another super demon who tried to ambush me while I thanked the officer. What did these demons think, that I wasn’t the best shooter in the CIA?

  Also, note to self. Don’t introduce Brady to this cop. His German fetish is going to make things so awkward.

  I stared down the remaining two demons, who roared their heads back. I didn’t have time for this shit. I shot the thicker one dead, at a range that required a little more focus than usual but nothing that required too much effort. The lion, however, dodged and slowly came forward.

  “In the jungle, the mighty jungle…” I sang to myself as the demon lion advanced. We circled each other, all while I kept an eye on the Arachtar, who seemed more intent on finding the German cop. I just thanked Yevon that the captive had training for situations at least somewhat resembling this instead of being a civilian.

  Suddenly, the lion lunged forward, its claws extended, ready to tear my throat out. In a single motion, I fired both my guns, dropped to the ground, and covered myself. I felt the tail of the demon whip my face, a tail far thornier than a human-realm lion, but one that did no more damage than a few scars. I looked up and saw the lion turn to dust.

  “The lion sleeps toniiiiight,” I sung as stood up, twirling my guns on my finger.

  The good news was that I had now reduced the threat from an unlucky thirteen demons—ignoring that more came later—to just one, and the cop had hidden.

  The bad news was the one demon left was a monstrous version of the hardest demon to defeat aside from Nuforsa and possibly Paul. And boy, was he pissed off as he approached me.

  “This is your fucking grave, Sonya!” he growled. “You will die here!”

  I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Movement from a figure in black. I knew what my best move was here.

  “Really, you ugly fucker? This is my grave? Couldn’t you at least give me the courtesy of a burial in the USA? That is where—”

  “I was warned that you talk too much!” it roared. “You need someone to shut your fucking mouth for you!”

  “Please, do you think you can do that? My brother can’t, the men I like can’t—hell, I can’t even shut my own mouth. What makes you think you can accomplish what no one else can?”

  “Shut up!” the demon growled. “I will destroy you here!”

  “See, you keep sprouting these lies and I don’t think you realize how poor that makes you look,” I said, needing just a few more seconds. “What would Mundus think? Mundus, the Dark Lord, the Mundus who—”

  “Do not say the Dark Lord’s name, you wretched scum!”

  “Whose name, Mundus?”

  That set the demon off, for he raised his arms and bellowed. I raised my guns, and the Arachtar quickly closed up, but mine was nothing more than a feign. Suddenly, the beast staggered forward as a gunshot echoed through the spirit forest. The Arachtar had not perished, but the wound and distraction were enough to have the creature forget my presence and turn its back on me.

  I sprinted toward the monster, firing Ebony and Ivory into its back. The policeman and I took turns firing at the ugly thing whenever it exposed itself, and when I got close enough, I slid under it, firing at it from undernea
th. The beast staggered forward, and I landed three good shots into its head to finish it off. It crumpled to the ground, turning to dust.

  “Sweet,” I said as I holstered my guns. “What an afternoon.”

  I turned to the cop, who quickly sheathed her gun. There was no point in pretending to work for a bank on Wall Street, the cop had just seen me kill a baker’s dozen demons.

  “Sonya Ferguson, CIA, sorry that you got dragged into this mess.”

  “Janet Schlosser, police. I’m fine, thank you. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. I think the bigger question is are you OK? It’s not every day that you see demons attacking humans.”

  “No, it is not,” she deadpanned. “But I am OK, thanks to you, so all will be well.”

  “Well,” I began before deciding to shift course from my mission. “Somewhat. Janet, I need a favor from you. I would normally explain the backstory of what’s going on, but given what you just saw, I don’t need to convince you of what is going on.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said.

  I explained to her my concern that the demons had used this as a distraction to take me away and had bit hundreds of humans at the marathon. They wouldn’t have gone out in the open, but all it took was a single human straying into the woods for a moment of silence or a piss for a demon to snare them. I told her how I’d get her back to the human realm, and once she got there, she needed to keep a tally of who had become a shifter and to let me know. I gave her my contact information.

  “But where are you going?” she said as I opened a portal back to the human realm, at which point the Berlin Wall would be just a short trot away—well, relative to the marathon around me.

  “I’m going to the source of all of these assholes and making sure that they don’t pull shit like this again.”

  “Again?”

  “Are you seriously doubting someone who just killed thirteen demons?”

  She chuckled at that, thankfully good-humored about the whole thing. I teleported Janet to the other side and shook her hand before leaving.

  “Hey!”

  I paused, groaned, and turned around.

  “Make it quick.”

  “You killed eleven. I got two.”

  I couldn’t help the smirk that was on my face. Janet was all right. Hopefully, I’d run into her again. Maybe she could help.

  “Fine. But I’m still ahead in the kill count.”

  With that, I ran back to where we came. I did my own count of bite marks that I saw, and it was ugly. I stopped counting the number of humans with scars after I reached two dozen. I just had to assume that this entire area of people would become shifters and need to be quarantined.

  The worst part was knowing it could happen at any second. This wasn’t some full-moon in the sky story. This was real, and Mundus could change them at any moment.

  Which was why I had to get to DJ and hopefully Carsis at the Berlin Wall before things got even worse.

  Chapter 10

  As I sprinted away from Janet and toward the Berlin Wall, the run taking far longer than I had anticipated, I realized how fortunate this moment was. I had anticipated that the demons would attack the marathoners, turning a sickening percentage of Berlin into shifters. I feared that they would use the pandemonium and confusion to their advantage. Fortunately, they’d only seized one person—that I was aware of, at least. They had bitten more, but peace reigned. For now.

  But it was only a matter of time before Mundus and his armies showed no concern about invading the human realm without disguises or subtlety. And when that happened, how would the world react to the demons? To the Arachtar? The world was not Hollywood or Las Vegas, where people who looked like demons could be dismissed as playing their part for a bizarre film or street performance. Once demons popped up in places like rural Tennessee, Ukraine, Malaysia, Argentina, and Mexico City, to name just a few, panic would ensue. Governments would have to either face reality or come up with some incredible explanations to push things away.

  I could see it now. The conservatives in America declaring this to be a sign of the apocalypse. The atheists claiming that this was some sort of religious terrorism, using hardened metaphors from our time to scare us.

  None of it mattered, though. Thinking about a future that I had no control over only wasted energy, energy I needed for when I would confront Mundus, Tyrus, and, sadly, Paul Stephens. Any spillover to the world’s consciousness was something I could not control. I knew someday I would have to tell my story of what happened here, and hopefully, that would be it. Hopefully, it would be the words of a hopeful woman and not the words of one of the last non-shifters on Earth.

  As I ran north and then east, no one seemed to take notice of me. Most people just laughed, sat on benches, congratulated their friends, and sipped on beer. I wished I could feel like them. Especially when I began to see bite marks.

  No one had actually died, which was the funny thing. To me, it was actually a worse alternative. For many of them, dying would have meant a chance to pass to heaven and fight the good fight. Turning into shifters turned them into ticking time bomb slaves for Mundus. They were conscripted into his army and didn’t even know it.

  First things first, though. You need help. Get it from DJ and Carsis.

  I continued moving as quickly as I could, finally arriving at the Berlin Wall Memorial. Two major details caught my attention when I arrived. One, the place was devoid of all humans. It looked like someone had evacuated the place. Or wiped it clean.

  And two, the absence of all life extended to DJ and Carsis.

  I cursed under my breath and took stock of the area. On my right, a small building going up about five stories rose, containing multiple levels of exhibits about the Berlin Wall. That seemed promising since it would give me a vantage point to see everything. I carefully walked forward, Ebony and Ivory not out but at the ready, just in case I saw humans inside and needed to avoid alarming them. Inside on the first floor, I saw the standard museum design—pillars with text and photos, displays with artifacts, a video on loop discussing life in East Berlin, and a book containing messages from visitors.

  And, still, no one else.

  It wouldn’t do me any good to examine the exhibits, so I made my way to the stairs and climbed as quickly as I could. I didn’t worry too much about making sound, given that if an enemy was here, they probably knew of my presence anyways. Speed matter more than sleuthing.

  When I reached the top, I could see one small section, maybe the length of two school buses, remained of the Berlin Wall. It looked like the actual wall itself—I could still see barbed wire, the stone walls rising too high to be climbed without getting shot, and the guard towers.

  And finally, thank heavens, I saw DJ and Carsis standing in front of something on the near side of the actual wall.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  Carsis turned around, an annoyed look on his face. DJ turned with a smile. Carsis put a finger to his mouth, as if signaling for silence, and he made a good point. Even though I didn’t care about running up the stairs, forcefully bringing attention to myself would just make life worse. I raised my hand to motion that I would be down there in just a second, ready to rescue my brother—and maybe interrogate Carsis for his decision to leave me with the demons.

  I turned and gasped at the figure standing by the stairs, in his normal dark red suit and tie and trademark, snickering smile.

  “Hello, Sonya,” Tyrus said. “Did you enjoy our welcoming party today?”

  “If that was your welcoming party, tell Mundus and his crew that he needs to actually make me sweat.”

  Tyrus laughed, his mouth closed, more of a throat chuckle than a full sinister laugh.

  “Oh, dearest Sonya, ever the brash-mouthed one,” he said. “I shouldn’t be surprised, knowing you. Now then, let’s get right to it, shall we. I am here to remind you of the offer I made on the train bathroom.”

  Oh seriously, this again?

  You know what
, play along. See what he says.

  “I might be receptive to it, now that you haven’t cornered me near a toilet.”

  “It’s about the only place I can find you alone, you know.”

  OK, that was technically true, but still. Come on, creeper. He’s a demon, what do you expect?

  “In any case, remember what I said. If you swear allegiance to Mundus, you get to live. Your friends get to live and avoid becoming shifters. Which, I might add, is a mighty important bargaining chip that Mundus has over you right now, seeing as how your brother is in the possession of a demon who hates you very much right now.”

  Brady. Tyrus would know! He’d have to know!

  “How is he? Where the hell is he?!?”

  “Believe it or not, he’s right over there,” he said, swinging his arm toward Carsis and DJ. Both of them were frozen. Once more, Tyrus had twisted time to suit his meetings. “He’s just on the other side of the wall. Unfortunately, there will be something guarding him. I should warn you that it is a bit, shall we say, uglier and more dangerous than what you have fought before. Something that will not go down with ease. Something, if I am being completely honest, you might be an underdog against.”

  He wants me to go over there. He’s pushing me.

  “Try me,” I sneered, feeling more rage fill inside me. Tyrus was purposefully wasting my time. He was pissing me off, and I was this close to shooting him and ending my time with the loquacious asshole.

  “Me? Why would I do such a thing?” Tyrus said with a chuckle. “‘Try you’ is exactly what Nuforsa did, and we saw how that worked out. As much more powerful I am compared to you, Sonya, your demon side is truly something to be reckoned with, something that only a couple of demons in the underworld can handle—including Mundus and myself.”

  On the one hand, I weirdly felt encouraged by that. But I also had my suspicions this was a big lie. But…

  “Unfortunately for you, you can only unlock the demon side in you if are compelled by pure hatred. And while you may grow to hate what you encounter with your friends over there, you will not do it soon enough to transform into a demon. I stand here now to say you do not have to fight the demon. Come with me. I will take you—”