Bladed Wings (25 page)

They ripped into his back, bursting from his chest, one at his stomach, one from his heart. Timothy thought about Jenny. She could be dead. They could be killing her right now; spikes of dark energy shot from the tendrils. Timothy jerked his tendrils back, ripping bigger holes in the demon. Choking or coughing, Timothy couldn’t tell the difference, the demon fell to the roof. He twitched once. He didn’t move after that.

Energy spilled into him. Timothy let it come, knowing he’d need every bit of power he could get to find Jenny and get her out of here.

Timothy prodded the corpse with one foot to make sure he was dead and wouldn’t pop up again. It’s wrong to shoot someone in the back, Timothy remembered. It wasn’t supposed to be honorable. But Timothy didn’t care. When the demon didn’t move, Timothy exhaled. Dragging the body to the edge, tucked beneath the roof’s lip, and behind one of the vents, Timothy didn’t think anyone would find him unless they were searching for a body. From there he went to the door which led to a stairwell. After staring at it for a few seconds, his eyes hurt, and Timothy had to conclude there weren’t any traps up here.

Down the steps, Timothy came to another door. He pushed it open and crept inside.

Eight

              The top floor had been built for employees. Sneaking through linoleum-floored halls, Timothy found a bunch of tiny offices. Computers were off and never used. He didn’t realize a department store would have so many paper pushers, but that was just irritating because it meant Jenny could be locked in any one of these rooms. He hoped she would be beating the door, shouting to know what was happening. But then she could just as easily still be unconscious.

              He found a janitor’s closet. Even when he checked each door for demonic energy, he knew there could be a regular alarm. Sure, there wouldn’t be something arcane, a patchwork of energies that would explode if the wrong demon passed the threshold, but there could just as easily be a call center somewhere in Tennessee that would receive word one of their department stores had been broken into.

              And Timothy couldn’t do anything about those risks.

              He half-heartedly looked for a weapon in the different offices and closets. He found one room filled with nothing but pallets of paper. Millions of sheets no one would ever use. Then Timothy found a set of double doors. He assumed they led to another stairwell. He pushed them open and found a room that wasn’t empty and definitely still used.

              Compared to the tiny offices that could have just as easily been broom closets, this place felt like a cavern. With a big desk set in the center and a wall of glass windows, it looked like something any company’s executive would be proud to call his own. A chandelier of candles illuminated the room with golden waves of light that flickered just enough to be romantic.

              Despada’s, Timothy thought, this lair belonged to Maria Despada. Everything she did would go through this room. That made it dangerous, but Timothy didn’t care. He wanted information, and this was where his enemies’ brain lived.

              Made of dark, almost black, wood, the desk stood, big and massive, a monument to Despada’s power. It could have been a conference room table with drawers. Small statues of elephants, foxes, wolves, octopi, and some creatures Timothy couldn’t name stared up at him. There were papers too, writing in languages Timothy couldn’t even recognize. When he went to the walls, he saw more statues on the shelves. Each was a few inches tall; some were carved wood, others stone. They all looked expensive, pieces that required appraisers. Then he saw the books. He recognized some of the writing: Cyrillic, Arabic, and Latin alphabets. Most of them were in languages Timothy didn’t read. One was in Spanish, but it was so old he couldn’t get any meaning from the spine. Timothy saw some English:
Lore of Arcana, The Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus, Demonologies Across Spaces and Time, The Necronomicon.

              Nothing useful, Timothy decided this was a waste of time.

              Timothy turned back and that’s when he got scared, really scared. Sneaking around made him nervous, but he could always breathe. This time he didn’t just hold his breath. In that moment he couldn’t even feel his lungs.

              Hands were stapled to the wall above her door.

There were dozens of stiff, dead hands. They looked like they reached out, trying to touch something they could never get. Shivering against his will, Timothy still concentrated and he saw some of those hands belonged to demons. Faded hues of green, black, blue, and red still clung to the fingers and palms, the knuckles and nails. But a lot of them were blank. They were just people.

              Timothy realized Despada was more than a demon, more than a person.

              He had to find Jenny.

              That thought gushed through his brain on a current of raw panic.

              Timothy shoved his way out of the doors, back down the hall. He jogged, as quietly as he could, searching for a stairwell. All he found was one door, locked. He didn’t see any stray keys. They probably didn’t use the stairs, just the elevator.

              That would make sneaking around so much harder.

              His other choice was the front door. And there was something there he couldn’t explain, and that would take time. So he went to the elevator, pushed the down button, and waited. Above the sliding doors, numbers ticked.

One, two, three, four, and they opened. Timothy had his palms out, ready to stab anyone there. He’d aim for the throat. That could work. But if there were more than two, he’d be distracted, wouldn’t get them all at once.

              They’d shout for help before he could win.

              Every one of Despada’s demons, all of her drudges, could come running. He could be washed away in a wave of enemies. Timothy imagined himself drowning because no one could block or dodge ten attacks every second.

              The elevator was empty.

              Timothy got inside, happy there wasn’t a camera glaring down at him. He didn’t hear any alarms either. So far, he could guess he was safe. A few seconds and that would change when he confronted whichever demons guarded Jenny. He hit the button for the third floor. He guessed they’d have her higher up, somewhere that would be easy to defend. She was a prize; they’d want to keep her, though never as much as he wanted to get her back.

              Five seconds of jangling and rumbling as Timothy held out his tendrils.

              He had to be ready.

              Before the doors were even completely open, Timothy spotted the drudge and lanced out with his tendrils. They shot straight into the creature’s eyes. Timothy spiked them again. The drudge’s head exploded into a mess of bone and dark fog that rolled and dissipated. Ripping his tendrils free from the debris, Timothy jumped out and glanced down both directions.

              There weren’t any more of the creatures. His heart beat faster than he wanted; he felt the rage and fear running along the back of his neck and it made his stomach burn. From middle class upbringing to middle class college, Timothy never expected or experienced this kind of sensation. It was new, and it stung.

              Running along, the third floor was still crammed with boxes. This must have been storage. When Timothy looked up he saw the ceiling, all of thirty feet away. Still he felt close to claustrophobic because the only way to get around was through the narrow halls of boxes, four feet wide leading into a maze of paper bag brown. Above him, Timothy spotted those black spheres that house cameras, and he hoped they were off.

              The layout of packaged TVs, couches, chairs, tables, and shelves was probably very well organized. There was probably even a chart or map somewhere back on the fourth floor, though Timothy couldn’t see the pattern. Instead he wandered, stopping at every intersection to check for enemies.

              At the third intersection he heard it, coming from behind.

              A quiet, wet, squishing sound. Timothy spun around to see one of the drudges running for him, its arms out stretched, its hands shaped to strangle him. Timothy summoned his tendrils, which only half formed when the drudge tackled him. The creature’s weight coupled with the scent of rotted vegetables pressed down on Timothy. He tried to roll away and break the creature’s grasp, but then his throat closed, air blocked as his lungs ached for oxygen.

              He couldn’t concentrate, but he didn’t need to.

              The tendrils burst from his wrists, stabbing into the creature’s hands. Later, Timothy would be very happy that they didn’t go all the way. If his tendrils had spiked through the creature’s hands, they would have gone straight into his neck. But whatever evolutionary force guided his tendrils knew how to avoid accidental suicide.

              Timothy’s tentacles ripped through the drudge’s hands. The pressure gave way; Timothy inhaled as he tried again to force the drudge off him. That didn’t work, but a second later Timothy punched up. It wasn’t a great blow, but it was enough to disorient the creature, to give Timothy the leeway to roll away. Pulling himself to his knees, he threw out his tendrils. They stabbed the creature, but his aim was off. One lodged in the drudge’s shoulder, the other in his forearm. Still, it was enough. Timothy pulled, knocking the creature to its stomach.

              As it tried to get up, Timothy’s tentacles coiled around the creature. A hard yank and its head flew off. The creature dissipated. Panting, Timothy turned around, hoping for empty hallway.

              In front of him came more drudges. At least three, when he glanced back at the first one, he saw more of them. Surrounded on both sides, Timothy didn’t know how to kill so many. Isis would have turned into a bear and bashed them down one at a time, smashing and pulverizing her way through them. Devi would have done the same thing with her wolf, and Timothy couldn’t spend any more time thinking about it.

              One of the drudges jumped for him; he didn’t know they could jump.

              The drudges who attacked Cordinox’s warehouse had been slow, clumsy, and moved with all of the cunning as a horde of zombies. This one almost danced the way it stood up, swiping out with its claws.

              A couple of them might still be shambling like they were half-dead.

              Too many others watched Timothy. They saw him with intelligence and strategy.

              This drudge landed right in front of him, slashing for Timothy’s chest. Demon instincts called for a shield, so a disk of shadowed energy appeared in front of Timothy. Without realizing how, Timothy understood his tendrils weakened as he blocked the jumper’s attacks. And there were a lot of them as the drudge swung, pattering Timothy’s shield with a rain of attacks. Those scratches drained Timothy’s strength, though the shield kept the drudge from just decapitating him.

              Timothy let the shield go and held out both palms. It tried to slide out of the way. Though fast, it didn’t have the speed it needed. Twin tendrils exploded from his palms, stabbing and bursting with spikes inside the creature’s chest. It fell to the ground, banging both knees, even as a pair of arms wrapped around Timothy’s shoulders.

              The tendrils looped up and around, garroting the creature and cleaving its head from its shoulders. Another drudge appeared in front of Timothy and he knew he couldn’t do this. One of them would get lucky. Someone would knock him out or wound him in a way he couldn’t fix. He had to retreat, get some distance so he didn’t have to fight them at this bottleneck.

              He threw up his tendrils, straight at the ceiling. They weren’t long enough. Gravity pulled them back to the floor, but Timothy threw them out a little more. Tearing through the cardboard and into the wood or plastic inside, Timothy grappled the boxes at the top of the stacks overhead. He pulled, almost tearing his arms from their sockets. If he could get up there, he could get away. They might sound an alarm, but he wouldn’t be dead and that would mean he could keep looking for Jenny. Hands and claws shot out for his shoes, his ankles.

              Something unyielding caught him.

              Timothy felt the pressure and knew he would be torn in two if he didn’t let go. The tendrils dissipated with a thought and he fell back down, swarmed by the creatures. They were on him, claws digging into his skin, hands pummeling him. Too much pain flared through every part of his body; he couldn’t survive this. One more second and bones would break. Another two seconds and he’d be unconscious.

              He would be dead by ten.

              Jenny would be eaten.

              Jenny, the girl who smiled and teased him and laughed and made him feel like the world was a great place where everything could happen. That’s who would be gone and dead and food for the monster who killed her. Timothy would never see her again.

              Despada would cut her up and eat her soul.

              Timothy’s eyes blurred with tears sparked by rage.

              He punched out, both arms.

              Neither strike did much damage. Bruises wouldn’t bother the drudges.

              But it didn’t matter.

              All of the strength of three demons, his prey, flared through Timothy’s tendrils. Power blasted from his palms, focused by everything he was and the girl he wanted to protect. Desperation and desire and need and every other impulse that can drive a human hand shunted into those tendrils. It channeled through his tentacles, everything he had.

              Tendrils shot in both directions.

              Timothy didn’t see it. His eyes were scrunched shut, every synapse aimed at those tendrils.

              The black lines of energy burst through one drudge, two, three, four, and five. Both directions, he skewered them all. Those spiked tentacles ripped through the drudges like paper. Then everything was still for a moment.

              Timothy opened his eyes, and the spikes burst from the tentacles. When he pulled his arms to his chest, the tendrils tore back out, ripping gaping wounds into each of the drudges. Somewhere at the edge of his perceptions he heard the bodies as they hit the floor. And then Timothy was alone, surrounded nothing but dissipating corpses.

              Panting, he let himself stumble. He got to his knees and leaned against the boxes. The smell was bad; the screaming of bruises, cuts, and fractured bones was a lot louder. Even breathing hurt. So he waited. Tapping his fingers against the tips of his shoes, he waited for the bones to knit, the bruises to lighten, and the cuts to close.