Demon Hunt (17 page)

Behind the chaos in a quiet pocket of snow, the man in the coat hunkered down over the first headless body. He yanked the corpse upright and buried his face in the fountain spurting from the girl’s headless torso to gulp at the fresh blood. His body moved rhythmically against the girl’s until he was filled and he groaned with release.

Manius Black stood to rip the clothes from his body and stand naked in the snow. The beautiful features his older brother pummeled earlier were a mask of blood and his gaze emitted visible red sparks as he bounded with a howl of glee into the now visible maelstrom of feeding demons to join them.

Troy stood apart from the madness, a dispassionate observer, waiting for Manius to deplete his unspent fury. He held a change of clothes for his master and a garbage bag for the soiled ones. The cloud of fear from the victims of the feast would reenergize Manius and engorge his demons with a staggering amount of power. The clean up would have been a pain in the ass but the vampire had recently acquired a servant capable of reducing the entire clearing to ash in seconds. Troy toyed with the idea of asking for one of those as well. The figure of the fallen knight made his way back to his servant as he scrubbed the blood from his skin with snow. A blanket of darkness blotted out the dim night sky over the clearing as the biggest monster of all arrived.

* * * *

Dan could see the figure of Melon bobbing in front of him on the trail. The idiot drove faster than Dan would ever dare on this terrain, eighty miles an hour at least. He tried not to let it bother him that the other two racers were hot on his heels, one behind the other, inches apart. Something flew out of one of the trees they ran near and smashed into the windshield of his snowmobile. As he fought for control, the thing on his windshield, still alive, crawled up over the shattered safety glass and attached itself to his head, ripping off his goggles with one sweep of a claw. His machine plowed to an abrupt stop, forcing the other two racers to slam into him at top speed. For Dan, there was the adrenalin of speed and the race and then a deranged blackness drew him down from the world of the living.

* * * *

Two miles away, Melon hit a good long stretch with his sled, the skis meeting with little resistance as he ran flat out, leaving his pursuers behind. He let out a laugh at the thought of the expression on Dan’s face upon being whipped by a mountain ‘redneck’ and poured on a another burst of speed before coming to the open space in the forest at the turn around point. He noticed a problem when he came around because there were no lights behind him. Dan’s sled was slower, but not
that
slow. “Crap, the moron’s taken himself and everyone else out,” he muttered and kicked off back into the woods with a grim look on his normally relaxed features.

A wreck could be a nasty thing at almost eighty miles an hour on a snowmobile. A rider could find himself skidding over snow with nothing to protect the body but coveralls, which would be shredded into coleslaw by the snow.

Melon slowed and searched for the track marks of the others. He hadn’t noticed losing the other racers – he’d been too intent on victory. They’d been gone for a good distance. He’d heard nothing, though. The sound of the wind screaming past his head had blocked all other sound.

He came upon the wreck and the sight jerked him up short. The three snowmobiles of his pursuers were piled up on top of each other as if a giant tossed them. The bodies of the men were scattered throughout the embankments on either side of the trail.

Melon sat on his sled for a moment, waiting for one of the dumb-asses to get up and walk over to him looking sheepish, but no one moved. The metallic scent of blood hit his nostrils as he got off and made his way to the first body lying in the light of his lamps. It was facedown and clothed in expensive black ski gear. Removing a glove, he reached down to check for a pulse and felt a wet substance touch his hand. He hesitated and then rolled Dan over in the snow to examine his adversary’s face. But there was no face, just a mask of blood. Something had chewed on the imperious features of Dan Brown.

“
Holy shit!” Melon fell back in the snow and crawled towards his snowmobile, idling five feet away. Then he spotted the eyes in the inky darkness stretching between the evergreens. First one pair of red and pus yellow glowing orbs, next the same eyes multiplied over and over. There were hundreds of eyes with the black space in between periodically punctured by darts of flame.

He scrambled aboard the machine and whipped forward, managing to run several of the things down as he barreled his way through back to the bonfire. His gloveless hand froze on the handlebar as his stomach tried to convince him that he needed to retch.

“
OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod,” Melon whispered, a rare prayer on his part. He wondered what the hell he would do if he made it back to the trucks.

It felt like hours before he saw the light of the fire. A landscape of carnage greeted him. He stopped for a moment to stare at the scene in shocked silence. The bodies of his friends were scattered like the spokes of a wheel around the fire with
things
bent over them, eating their prey. At least, what was left of their prey. They were finishing up.

Then a hurricane-strength shriek almost burst Melon’s eardrums. A silent shadow the size of an F-16 passed within several feet of his head. He didn’t bother to glance up. Ignoring the possible damage to his beloved machine, he jumped the snowmobile onto the ice-covered road to head for the hills. For all he knew, the hounds of hell were lapping at the tread marks he left behind. A few minutes down the road, a series of thunderclap explosions out of the area he had fled jarred the landscape, but he dared not go back and poured on the juice before the owners of those red eyes caught up with him to punish him for what he had lived to tell.

Chapter Eighteen

“
I saw blood,” Rhi said aloud. With an effort, she kept her eyes tightly shut where she lay. “And fire and death. People are dying in town tonight.”

“
I know,” replied Blackthorne. Weariness colored his words.

“
Then why are you here and not stopping him?”

“
Because it isn’t time. I’m not ready and he could possibly destroy me if I go after him. Some of my brothers will leave their responsibilities when it’s time to fight at my side as they did before but not until it’s
time
. They have as much or more to worry about than I do. I went dangerously close to the edge fighting him already tonight.” A chair creaked somewhere, an antique straining under the weight of a warrior.

A field of white lace met Rhi’s gaze when she opened them. An old-fashioned canopy hung over the bed she sprawled on in what was apparently one of Pearl’s guestrooms. Who visited an ancient madam and slept in the same house as her? Marilyn Manson?

She took a deep breath, immediately assaulted by the scent of
him.
Panicked, she grabbed at her throat and body. No bites, clothes still on, shoes and coat missing. A turtleneck was a great thing.

“
No, I didn’t bite you or molest you while you were out.” The sardonic tone of his voice had an edge.

She slowly sat up and turned to face him where he sat in the chair by the bed, his long legs stretched out and propped up on the edge of the bed, his sock feet crossed. The evidence of his earlier fight was gone from his face. There were no visible cuts or bruises.
He’s a vampire. They’re supposed to heal fast.
“Vampires aren’t supposed to take their shoes off.” Numb, she looked around for his boots. It made her uncomfortable that he could be so homey around her. And if he could take off his shoes - would he take off anything else she asked him to? She truly needed to get laid if she were desperate enough to want this guy.

He put a hand over his mouth, hiding a grin. He couldn’t hear her thoughts, could he? Of course not, that was silly.

“
Vampires don’t run around in their sock feet.”

“
Oh, really? Who made a rule up about socks? It doesn’t matter because I’m not a vampire - I’m a Changeling. I have to drink human blood, a lot of it, before I become a true vampire and can - no longer take my shoes off in your presence.”

“
Where are
my
shoes?”

“
On the floor.”

“
How did I get here?”

“
I carried you.”

She rolled off of the other side of the bed to snatch up her boots and moved to a nearby chair to strap them back on. “Did you enjoy that?”

“
Enjoy what?” Blackthorne hadn’t moved from his spot but his stare followed her every movement.

“
Carrying me. Freaking me out with Pearl’s damned picture?”

“
I avoid the front hallway myself when I’m in town and use the kitchen door. I thought that it might be enlightening for you to see the portrait. Pearl refuses to take it down. She always liked you, you see.”

“
And you don’t?”

After a silent moment, he rose to stalk around the bed and tower above her, Rhi face to face with his chest. “Pearl’s waiting downstairs with your friends. If we can get Pam to shut up for two minutes, your questions might be answered,” he told her.

“
Good luck, Bubba. If you duct taped that woman’s mouth shut, her tongue would still be flapping so much it would beat her brains out.” Rhi stalked to the door and pulled at the antique Victorian glass doorknob. Locked. “God, does anybody decorate by just going to the mall in this place?”

Blackthorne flicked his hand at the door, which swung open by itself.

“
Showoff.”

* * * *

They arrived in the kitchen moments later where Houston sat at the kitchen table observing Pearl as she assembled snacks and drinks on a silver tray. Pam perched on the counter chattering as at Rhi’s house for movie night instead of having been abducted by mythical, magical beings.

“
Oh, my God! Rhi - how does it feel to be walking proof of reincarnation?” she asked, swinging her legs to and fro.

“
What? No ‘How are you, Rhi?’ or ‘Been drained of all of your blood, Rhi?’” She a bit annoyed that she’d been left alone with a
vampire.
A vampire who stood behind her with his hand on the small of her back like his skin belonged in contact with her.
Then maybe, after seeing our portrait, his hand does belong there.
She shrugged away from him.

Houston looked apologetic. “He wouldn’t let us near you. And not to sound like a chicken, but I was a bit intimidated. Does he have his
shoes
off?”

“
See, I told you!” Rhi crowed triumphantly.

Pearl interrupted what was about to become a full discussion of the ‘rules’ of being an immortal. “To the den, boys and girls. I can never keep this room warm enough and the place has been remodeled fifteen times.”

“
Try the mall.” Blackthorne told her and gave Rhi a little smirk as he stepped around her.

Somehow she couldn’t see Pearl talking to a guy in an orange apron about bath fixtures and proper installation of garage door openers
.

“
Pearl DeVere! She’s always been my hero … you know she once owned every man in this town!” Pam informed Rhi as she hopped down from her perch.

“
Men are easily led around by the nose, darling, but it works better if you have a-hold of something more substantial.” Pearl seated her guests in a thoroughly modern den. The huge room had been outfitted with wall-to-wall shelves filled to bursting with leather bound books. Nearby sat a huge mahogany credenza desk, topped by a sleek black computer. Overstuffed, distressed leather chairs and couches completed the room; a place a book lover could die happy in, redolent of clean burning wood fires and rich leather. The hostess left to fetch what she jokingly called ‘immortal caffeine’ while the rest of the group seated themselves in front of the warmth of the fireplace to pepper Blackthorne with questions.

“
So, how old are you, Blackthorne? Don’t you think you’re robbing the cradle a bit?” Pam asked, referring to Rhi.

Rhi sat near the much larger ‘being’, as she now liked to think of him, on Pearl’s designer couch. She tried not to slide involuntarily down the leather cushion towards him.

Her captor didn’t glance at her as he answered Pam. “I’m over 800 years old. And Rhi’s older than you think she is.”

Rhi rolled her head back on the couch and moaned. “Great. I’m already sliding downhill towards my thirties and you tell me I’m older than I think? This day sucks.” She looked at Blackthorne’s mouth off to the side of her, the extra pointy teeth tucked out of sight. “Forget my last statement - okay?”

Pam sprawled in a nearby armchair. Her bright gaze greedily took in the room, especially Blackthorne. “So if you aren’t going to eat us, can we chat? And by the way, I’d find all of this a lot more believable if you could do a magic trick or something?”