by John Conroe
“Not the season—the Fairie Court,” Stacia said, rolling her eyes at my personal pixie. “Some kind of altered worm.”
“Where is this hole?” Chris asked.
The man trembled and just looked at him, but Declan turned and pointed at the smallest, middle-of-the-horseshoe building. “Behind there, maybe fifty yards past the dumpster.”
The man, whose name tag said Sven and indicated he was a manager, started to shake even harder, his eyes bugging out of his head. Suddenly he was pawing at his shirt collar, pulling a cord that hung around his neck. A flat wooden object flopped out from his stained, one-time white golf shirt and he shoved it in his mouth. Sucking in a big breath, he suddenly froze as Arkady’s giant left hand grabbed the back of his neck while the equally large right hand plucked the wooden lozenge from his mouth.
“Is whistle,” my warrior bodyguard said.
“Bring him. Everyone weapon up,” Chris said. The aunties pulled Glock 18s from hidden holster pockets on the baby carriers, Stacia spun her massive blade breaker over her head, ‘Sos shimmered and grew into a giant grizzly, Deckert pulled a super-short assault weapon from the sling bag he was wearing on his back, Holly reached into the back of the SUV she had ridden in and produced an aluminum baseball bat, and Declan just stood and smiled at us. Then the street lights went dark for a hundred yards in both directions and his blue eyes glowed.
“Right. Off we go,” my Chosen said. Arkady slapped a hand over the hotel manager’s mouth and wrapped the other massive arm around the man and carried him like I would carry a yoga mat.
With Declan in the lead, we headed through the parking lot, around the end of the building, and into a grassy lot out back. The grass was a foot and a half high with just a few short, scrubby plants littered about the field. Two hundred yards distant, a row of trees announced the end of the property.
Moving almost in single file, we followed our witch as he moved in a straight line. Suddenly he stopped, foot raised in mid-air. “Snak—” was all he got out before his girlfriend stutter-stepped forward and grabbed the back of his shirt, plucking him backward. A long, thick shape shot through the air where he had just been and then Holly was there, her hand snatching the rattler behind its wedge-shaped head, right out of the air.
“Don—” Declan started but a sharp crack interrupted him as the new girl squeezed her hand abruptly. The young werewolf held the dead snake up triumphantly, waving it mostly at Stacia and Declan.
Personally, I didn’t really care all that much, not very excited to have a poisonous snake anywhere near my babies.
But Declan looked regretful. Then he looked angry, but suddenly his expression went to extremely curious. He stepped up close as the rest of us crowded around the excited young werewolf girl.
“That’s not a normal rattler,” he said.
“And it never rattled,” Stacia said.
“And it’s a lovely shade of blue-green,” Lydia added.
Declan reached out one finger and touched the dangling body of the serpent.
“It’s modified. Zinnia’s work,” he said.
“Think it slipped through the gate?” Chris asked.
“More like it’s a guard,” Stacia said, her boyfriend nodding.
“If she put one guard here…” Nika said, and then the grass started to buzz.
“Ow,” Arkady said, mildly, his right hand slapping his neck. The manager, Sven, opened his mouth and yelled an unintelligible scream and all hell broke loose.
A cloud of buzzing, flying somethings rose up in the air while the sounds of multiple doors opening came from the hotel buildings.
“Aunties to me,” Declan said and my two sisters moved, arriving at his side as he finished his sentence. Bug things flew at them but bounced off an invisible wall. Sometimes I really love that kid.
“Tinks. Poisonous to humans,” Stacia said. The manager’s scream turned into a shriek of pain and then cut off completely. He slumped, dead, in Arkady’s left arm.
The sounds of fast-running feet announced new players as my bodyguard dropped the body and turned toward the hotel.
Something stung my side, my slap crushing a three-inch humanoid-looking thing with dragonfly wings.
Then the runners were upon us.
The manager hadn’t been lying. The hotel must have been full to the brim with short, muscular men in bloody hats, and squatty goblins like the ones we had killed by the score in Fairie. Something like thirty of them raced at us across the open grass.
Finally, something to fight!
My swords were slicing the first Red Cap a split moment before I felt my Chosen by my side, his arms slipping through a chunky, squat green goblin without any resistance at all.
“Draco,” I heard Declan say, and suddenly giant wings flapped in the night as flashes of blue and ultraviolet laser light lit up the darkness.
Turns out there were thirty-nine. The wolf girls didn’t even take time to Change, too worried about missing out. I saw Stacia spear one goblin on her breaker, then swing it hard enough to fling the thing off as one of the crosspieces punctured a Red Cap under the arm pit and out the other side.
Chris, Arkady, and myself killed most of them, but Stacia managed to kill some, and Holly beat one to a pulp with her bat. It was over in less than two minutes.
A swirling wind blew up around and through us, the flying Tinks getting sucked away. I turned to see what was going on behind us and saw a black horde of poisonous pixie bugs twisting like some kind of locust tornado. Declan’s mini-dragon was somehow there, flying overhead, his head pointed down at the bug swarm.
“Burn them,” the witch said from inside his circle, where my babies were being shielded from all harm.
Draco’s mouth opened and a blast of white-hot flame jetted straight down in a massive blast. The mother of all flamethrowers, it burnt the pixie bugs to cinders in an instant, the flames continuing on to hit the ground in an inferno torrent so hot, I could feel hairs on my skin curl up and I was thirty feet away.
The mini-dragon let off the flame but the fires kept burning, a fact that seemed to puzzle the odd beast, as it tilted its head like a dog would, ears pricking up and back. The fire on the ground began to spin and twirl and I glanced at our witch.
He was conducting, left hand spinning a circle, right making a sweeping gesture. The fire twisted up into a tornado of heat, light, and blistering wind. Then, moving to the will of the witch, it spun and snaked around the open lot of blackened grass, burning out any and all vegetation, venomous reptile, and poisonous bug.
With a flick of his hand, Declan banished the flame. His dragon looked at him quizzically, then flapped off to land in a distant tree.
The blackened ash-covered ground smoked, the rising heat making my thermal vision useless.
“How does he always show up and I never hear him?” Holly asked, staring straight at her alpha’s witch.
“He’s actually an Air elemental—living in a golem dragon body. Because of that, he can float and drift with his own wind and cover his sounds with gusts of air,” Declan said.
“And he flew all the way down here on his own?” I asked.
Declan scratched his head, looking a bit rueful. “He hitches rides on the plane.”
“He what?” Lydia asked.
“He clings to the outside of the plane and rides along with us.”
“He better not have damaged the plane these babies fly in, Declan O’Carroll,” Lydia said.
“Again—Air Elemental. He can adhere to a flying object with his own inherent magic. No damage done, I swear.”
“Let’s get this mess organized and find that portal,” Chris interrupted.
“We’ll sort the bodies; you check out the portal. Take the Fry Kid with you,” I suggested.
“Good plan, except some of the bodies are shooting sparks up into the air,” my Chosen said.
Sure enough, the squatty ape-like goblins were sparking and… well… kind of melting.
“Ashley told us that if a native of Fairie dies on Earth, it basically evaporates, its particles going back to its world,” Stacia said.
“But not the bloody-headed things?” Lydia asked. The Red Caps were all just lying there, some in pieces, but no flashing dots of light or liquifying beyond normal pools of red blood.
“Human stock, vampire tissue. Not natural born to Fairie,” Declan said. “Better count quick,” he said, giving me a grin.
Shit! He was right. Nika, Arkady, myself, and Holly, of all people, counted up the kills, getting it done just as the last goblin became nothing more than a wet spot.
We met Chris, Declan, Stacia, and Lydia as they came back from the center of the burned area.
“Definitely a portal there. Closed, but there. We sealed it,” Chris said with a note of satisfaction.
“Thirty-nine total kills. One to Holly, five to Stacia, six with laser burns in their heads, seven killed by ‘Sos, Arkady got six, you got six, and I got… eight,” I said, managing to keep a poker face.
“Oh,” Chris said. “That’s fine.” His voice was suspiciously uncaring. “Omega calculates that the dragon burned over a ton or more of those Tinks.”
I did the math in my head. Most of the goblins weighed between a hundred fifty and maybe two hundred pounds. The Red Caps were probably lighter. Even being generous, the best I could come up with was sixteen hundred pounds. The dragon elemental thing had beat me by at least twenty-five percent on mass alone.
“Holy shit, you guys are competitive,” Declan said, shaking his head. “What about the demon thingy in the picture Chris drew?”
“Long gone,” Chris said. “Out roaming around, preparing for mayhem. We’ll have to track it down before it tracks us.”
“So what are you saying?” Lydia asked. “That we should saddle up and head back north?”
“Oh hell no!” my Chosen said. “Disney’s agreed to open the park at night for us. I’ve never been.”
“Me either,” Declan said.
“Mom could never afford it,” Stacia said.
I looked Arkady, Lydia, and Nika.
“I’ve never been,” Lydia said, Nika nodding.
Arkady scratched his neck where the bug had stung him. “Been once,” he said.
We all looked at him. He just shrugged. I let it go. Nika would find out the particulars of that little story.
“What about this mess?” Holly asked, looking at the bodies of the dead Red Caps. Declan waved a hand and every bloody body rose into the air, droplets of blood rising with them. They floated to the center of the blackened circle as the dragon leapt off its tree.
The second blast of fire was even hotter than the first and the kid did something with wind, making it a virtual oven. When it was done, there were just blackened husks. Not done, the witch made a pulling motion with his right hand and the freaking ground opened up, pulling the bodies under, the soil rolling under and over, fresh dirt replacing the charred stuff. Finally, he walked into the middle of it and squatted down, right hand palm down on the new dirt. Plants sprouted, grasses like the rest, growing three inches in ten seconds.
He fell over and his blonde girlfriend was there, catching him before he face planted. “Damned show off,” she said, lifting him to his feet.
“Just got to re-energize a bit,” he said. “Maybe we can get some food on the way to the Park?”
Both werewolves and ‘Sos snapped around to look at my husband, who was nodding and smiling. “Good plan.”
“Gluttons,” Lydia said, smoothing down Cora’s hair with one pale hand. The babies were alert and bright eyed, and they had somehow stayed quiet during the brief fight and flames.
“A local news van has arrived in the parking lot.”
“We’ll tell him this place didn’t work out and we’re headed to The Animal Kingdom. We’ll probably have cameras on us in the Park,” Chris said.
“Long as we can ride the rides,” Lydia said.
Declan pulled out the folded drawing that Chris had done. He studied it, then looked at the circle of short grass in the fresh dirt. “Should grow pretty quick. A couple of days and it won’t look like anything.”
Holly moved up next to him and looked at the picture over his shoulder.
“That hand looks female. Demons come in female too?” she asked.
Chris raised his brows and then moved over to look. I was right behind him. “She’s right. It’s feminine.”
He looked at me, frowning.
“Hey, let’s get going. We can worry about the hell bitch later,” Lydia said, left foot tapping.
So we went.
Conroe’s Notes:
I had a lot of fun doing these stories and I hope they help the overall arc of the series in a small way. The next Demon Accords book is Demon Devine, hopefully out in December 2018 or January 2019. I will definitely do another couple of sets of Compendium stories after that. They are a nice mental change of pace and so fun to write.
As with the first volume, I’ve included the first two chapters of Zone War, but I’ve added the third chapter and a touch. Enjoy.
Zone War
John Conroe
Chapter 1
“And now for today’s addition of Zone War. Viewers are warned that this presentation may include sudden images of extreme graphic violence, including death. This production is unscripted and carried live in unedited format for an authentic viewing experience. Under no circumstances should any viewer attempt to enter the Manhattan Drone Zone without explicit authorization by the Department of Defense Zone Exclusion Authority. All of the salvage and bounty personnel depicted are duly licensed and trained professionals. There are no amateurs in Zone War, and Flottercot Productions is not liable for any injuries or deaths incurred by viewers of this program.”
Of course I had to cross the living room at that exact moment, my bowl of ice cream balanced on my work tablet. I had timed my foray into the kitchen with exacting precision, determined to be in and out in under two minutes, which was the amount of time till that blasted show started. The rest of my family was huddled around the viewing wall in anticipation of the daily showing of what was currently the most popular reality show in the world. Not being able to find the ice cream scoop had foiled my plan.
The screen melted from a black background with floating words to a live feed showing bouncing footage of one of downtown Manhattan’s deserted streets, husks of cars littered about. The sun was out and the camera mounted on the outside of the LAV was broadcasting a clear, high-def picture, even if it was shaky from the vehicle’s ride.
Catching the opening scene was my first piece of bad luck. The second was Monique catching sight of me in the corner of her eye. “Hey, AJ’s here. You gonna watch it with us this time? Or hide in your room?”
“I’m going to work in my room, little sister, so that we can get paid for what I brought out yesterday,” I said.
The little sister part was ill-advised on my part, as it was guaranteed to trigger her twin’s temper. Gabby whipped around on the couch and glared at me. “Oh, is big brother busy saving the day?”
Fourteen-year-old girls should come with the same kind of hazard warning labels used for explosives and poisons. I’d rather face the Zone any day than get drawn into a verbal war with my lethal little sisters, who fire off words faster than a Russian Wolf anti-personnel drone fires flechettes.
“Gabby, enough. Ajaya’s work is important to this family, and you know it. All of our BUIs together aren’t enough to support us, even with your father’s death benefit,” my mother said, shutting down the more volatile of the twins. Then she turned my way. “And you, Ajaya Edward Gurung, how many times have I warned you about arrogance?”
“I wasn’t being arrogant, Mom. I was making the point that I have other things to do besides watch that crap, especially when I can see it in person any day I want—if I want to take the risk of being near them,” I said, moderating my tone.
Behind my mother, the terrible tw
ins both raised their hands and enacted individual ceremonial displays of the middle finger. Monique chose to pull off the imaginary top of her middle finger lipstick and apply a liberal dose to her lips while Gabrielle blew into her thumb to inflate her own middle digit.
My eyes flicked their way and then back to my mother, whose face had taken on her stoic look. The one where she tries not to crumble for fear of my weekly forays into what was regularly described by the Zone War narrator as the most dangerous place on Earth.
And it was. Take the island of Manhattan, release over twenty-five thousand highly advanced Russian, Chinese, and Indian autonomous war drones in a single stunning act of terrorism, and let simmer for ten years. The result was the one borough of New York City that was completely devoid of human inhabitants and whose artificially intelligent denizens aggressively kept it that way.