bedeviled & beyond 03 - bedeviled & beleaguered (8 page)

“No!” I screamed. But it was too late. The human crumpled to the ground with a smoking hole in his...shoulder? I turned to Dialle, “You didn’t kill him?”

He smiled, giving a slight bow, “Prince Dialle of the Royal Devil Court at your service, Princess Astra.”

On a reflex I opened my mouth to tell him not to call me that but I stopped myself and nodded. “Just this once...you can call me that.”

He laughed.

Running to Emo, I bent over his frighteningly still form. I turned him over carefully and gasped at the size of the hole in his chest. The knife had entered one side of his heart and the human had ripped upward, nearly severing a chunk of Emo’s heart.

I looked up at Dialle. “It’s bad. I don’t think I can fix it.”

Dialle only hesitated a fraction of a second. Bending down he scooped Emo into his arms, carrying him like he weighed nothing. “Touch my arm, Astra.”

We shifted and landed in Dialle’s quarters. Gerch waited by the door. Dialle barely gave him a glance as he laid Emo on his bed. “Get Celente, quickly!”

“Yes, your highness,” Gerch was a big guy but he could move damn fast under orders.

A moment later a beautiful Royal shimmered into place beside Dialle’s bed. She looked around at me and frowned slightly, then turned to Dialle. “What would you ask of me, My Liege?”

“Heal this halfling.”

She nodded and bent over Emo, placing her hands on either side of his gaping wound.

Dialle took one look at my terrified face and said, “Celente is the Court’s finest healer. She will save the Halfling.”

I nodded, sighing my relief. “I should call someone about the human. He needs medical and psychiatric help.”

Dialle nodded and I pulled out my pocket televisual. PC Cheets’ tired face swam into view after several bleeps. “Hey Astra. What’s up?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Cheets. I’m afraid I just had an altercation with a gargoyle and a rabid human in the park.”

She sighed and scrubbed a hand down her face. “I’ll take care of the gargoyle and report the human to the NMPD. What condition are they in?”

I grimaced. “The ’goyle is in several pieces I’m afraid. I’ve never seen anything like it, Cheets. The thing wouldn’t die. I think it was impelled.”

Her tired eyes sharpened, “Why do you say that?”

I shrugged. “Emo kept hacking parts off it and it didn’t even seem to feel it. It was legless and the torso was still trying to get to me. That’s not normal, gargoyle behavior. They don’t like pain. Usually they’re great big, very ugly babies.”

She nodded. “I agree.” She sighed, “What about the human?”

I grimaced again. “He brutally attacked Emo,” Cheets’ eyes widened and color flooded from her face, “Is he okay?”

I glanced at the bed, where Emo’s condition didn’t seem to have changed but Celente looked like she was beginning to wear down. “I don’t know. The human used a platinum knife and ripped it through Emo’s heart. He’s with the Court healer now. Dialle thinks he’ll be fine.”

Something of my fear must have been in my eyes. “But you’re not sure?” Cheets asked.

I took a deep breath and blew it out forcefully. “No. He looks really bad, Cheets. I’m scared for him.”

Her eyes filled with the compassion that made her a good cop. “Will you keep me posted on how he does, Astra?”

I nodded.

“Okay, so back to the human?”

“He’s got a hole in his left shoulder and he’s completely mad. They’ll need a med and a psych squad out there to detain and restrain.”

She nodded. “Got it.”

I hung up with Cheets and walked back to the bed. I was relieved to see that Emo’s face had regained some of its color and his wound was considerably smaller.

Celente looked dead on her feet. I knew from personal experience that healing was very taxing. Finally the last couple of inches of wound closed up and Celente straightened, nearly passing out as she tried to turn away.

I caught her and led her to a chair. “Sit here. Rest for a moment.”

The woman’s dark eyes glared at me but she did as instructed, probably too weak to defy me. Though it was clear she wanted to.

I returned to the bed and verified that Emo would be fine. He sat up and I helped him to his feet.

“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.

He frowned. “I saw a human on the ground, writhing and screaming. I ran over to him and asked him if he was all right.” Emo’s dark eyes were filled with horror. “He attacked me, Astra. The human attacked me.”

“I know. Cheets will turn him over to the Non-Magic Police Department.”

Emo didn’t seem to hear me. Staring straight ahead with his eyes slightly unfocused he murmured, “What are we going to do if the humans turn on us? We’ll have another Great War.”

I shook my head, not sure what to say to him. He was right. If the human race turned against all magic users and dark worlders we would have no choice but to fight back. Our fragile truce would end.

And so, most likely, would the human race.

CHAPTER FIVE

A Slight Swimming Incident

The demon flopped around the pool, a child upon its fang,

Our heroine did bid him go, then dispersed him with a bang.

I was sipping coffee in my new apartment and watching the human digital news on my information unit. I’d recently moved to the new place when the aftereffects of fighting off an Agar in my old place became too much for me. No matter how many times I’d cleaned the place I could still smell the aroma of garbage wrapped in electrical charges the Agar had left behind. Plus the thing had really screwed up the electrical works while trying to eat me.

The human digital news was filled with stories of panic and violence from all sides. Reports of magical creatures attacking humans unprovoked vied with reports of panic in the streets and random attacks on everyone the human public even suspected might be a magic user.

In the city, not too far from my office, a fairy smothered a young witch with fairy dust and then set her apartment on fire by knocking over her ritual candles.

The human who’d attacked Emo was interviewed on the news and he admitted to killing several of the people we’d seen strewn about the park grounds. He’d marked them, fairly or unfairly, as magic users and killed them for that reason alone. The news reports named several who were as human as the man who killed them. I shook my head, disgusted by the hate that had turned the man into a monster.

Uptown, several ghouls walked from the city’s largest cemetery and bit the heads off two people who were jogging past.

Several other accounts of varying levels of violence against magic users and innocent humans caused my heart to speed up with dread and fear.

The faces of the reporters had a certain pale twitchiness which told me more than anything else that the city wasn’t all that far from total chaos.

And things were degenerating rapidly.

Flick’s prophetic question slid through my mind unbidden.
Can you feel it?

I set my coffee down and reached for my cross. Placing it against my forehead I said his name.

He popped, sprawled full length, onto my divan. His mousy brown hair was damp at the ends and stringy with sweat, his face looked even paler than usual and there was a certain gray aspect to his lips.

“Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “Devil’s Plague.”

I winced in sympathy. Angels are not human and are therefore not susceptible to any of the human diseases. However, that didn’t mean that they never got sick. There were a few pretty virulent strains of illness that occasionally took hold of the angel population. Devil’s Plague, named thus for obvious reasons, was one of them. “Please tell me it isn’t widespread.” If the guardian angels all took ill the situation on Earth would be vastly worse...as if it weren’t already bad enough.

Flick shrugged, “Don’t know. I’ve pretty much been tucked into my cloud spewing from both ends for days.”

“Just awesome,” I muttered, trying not to think about where spewed things went after they left clouds.

“What do you need, Astra?”

I glanced at him, measuring my need against his misery. I finally decided he’d just have to deal with the misery. “I need to talk to a prophet.”

He groaned, “The paperwork alone will kill me.”

I shrugged, “Sorry, the world is collapsing around us and I need to know what’s going on.”

He loosed a rare curse. “All right but you’ll owe me big time for this.” He popped off before I could pin him down on a time frame.

“Jeesh! Cranky much?”

Something crashed through my window and I ducked, flinging myself behind the divan. A large rock rolled to within a few inches of my nose and sounds from the street flooded into the room.

I waited a few beats to make sure more rocks weren’t coming my way and then scuttled over to the breeched window to see what was going on below. Hundreds of people were gathered on the streets below my window. It was a roiling mass of humanity with no apparent objective other than to cause the maximum amount of damage to everything they encountered.

The crowd was throwing rocks and large pieces of metal through the windows of buildings all along the street. It appeared to be totally random violence. The faces I could see below reminded me of the human in the park who’d attacked Emo. Dark gazes projected unreasonable suspicion and hate.

My heart thumped against my chest in sudden fear. Something was very wrong. The people in the street had completely lost it. They were out of their minds with anger over something only they understood. I needed to find out what was happening and I had to do it fast.

As I watched, a woman went down in the midst of the chaos and I could hear her shrill screams as she was brutally trampled. I started for the door, not really sure what I could do but certain I had to do something.

I grabbed a hooded jacket from beside the door and yanked it on. Pulling the hood up over my head and face, I went out into the hallway, taking the flash lift to street level.

The double glass doors leading to the street slid open as I approached. Several rioters flew through the newly opened door, heading for the flash. Realizing I couldn’t let them have access to the building, I decided I’d have to use my magic to stop them. I yanked my power forward and created an impenetrable wall in front of the flash.

Huge mistake.

As the first couple of rioters pinged off the power wall and crashed onto their backs on the cold, marble floor, several stunned faces turned to look at me. Their hate-filled expressions focused on me with deadly intent.

If I stayed there I’d have to kill them. But I couldn’t leave them in my building. In their maddened state they’d probably start killing people. I coated myself with a power bubble and headed for the door. Shrieking in rage, the magic haters followed me out of the building.

I dived into the crowd, using my bubble as a battering ram against the rabid rioters in the street. People cried out in anger and surprise behind me as my pursuers pushed them ruthlessly aside to get to me.

I made it to the other side of the street, turned right and walked several steps, and then headed back into the crowd, just behind where I’d crossed over. I stopped moving in the middle of a tight knot of people who were screaming obscenities at no one in particular and watched my pursuers pass by with violence on their faces and in their flailing arms.

When they were gone, I quickly searched the area where I’d seen the woman go down but didn’t find her. Hopefully someone had helped her up and gotten her out of there.

Feeling like prey in the middle of a predator picnic, I started moving again, heading for the hoverpark where I’d left the ugly, dented, air booger. Placing my palm over the door sensor, I ducked into the hoverpark before anyone noticed the door had opened.

I hurried down the ramp to the underground garage where my neighbors and I parked our vehicles. I looked around as I approached the booger, not to assess my safety but to make sure nobody I knew saw me climbing into the butt-ugly thing.

The air booger opened as I approached, probably grateful anybody would want to climb into it. I hopped in, immediately punching buttons on the directional panel since audio command didn’t work.

The booger surged straight up to a spot ten feet above the ground and flipped to the right, heading toward the front of the hoverpark at top speed. I knew I’d have to use surprise to get past the rioters and keep them from surging into the building when the gate opened to let the booger out.

The booger and I headed for the slowly opening gate, with me chewing my lip. Through the rusted black iron I could see hundreds of human bodies, some of which were starting to recognize that the gate was opening.

I punched in additional speed and sat back with sweaty palms. It would be tight and my timing had to be impeccable. Just as I decided the pathetic booger was going to crash into the retreating edges of the gate we hit the opening, riding low to the ground and blowing the surging crowd back and down in fear for their lives. I winced as the gate’s edges scraped down both sides of the ugly booger, slowing our exit just enough to make my pulse spike. I punched up the speed and, after a tense couple of beats filled with the sound of metal screeching against metal, we were finally free. I immediately swung the booger in an arc that took me back past the gate, riding the air just above the street to keep the humans from jumping back up and storming the gate.

When the gate was far enough closed that I was sure they couldn’t squeeze through I punched in my destination and left the rioting humans behind.

I jabbed in the number for the PCD and watched as Cheets’s exhausted face swam into view. “Hey, Phelps.” She appeared to be standing in a cloud. Apparently, in some parts of the city the mist had begun to drop.

“I need the name of someone in the NMPD.”

Cheets winced. “It won’t do you any good. Their phones are so clogged with calls you’ll never get through.”

“What the hell is going on, Cheets?”

She shrugged, “I was hoping you could use your...connections to find that out, Phelps.”