Demon Squad 6 The Best of Enemies (12 page)

“How…” The words were slow coming out. “How are you?”

She nodded. “I’m okay—” she started, unconsciously running a hand across her stomach. “
We’re
okay.”

I drew closer and reached for her, wanting nothing more than to lay my hand on her belly and feel the life we’d made growing inside. She shook her head and sidestepped me, bringing me to a halt, fingers clasping at air. My heart sank into the gallows of my ass.

“I just—”

“I know, Frankie, I know.”

My gaze dragged itself to her face. There was no mistaking the sadness that lingered in her expression, but there was no also no mistaking the steel that lurked beneath.

“I can’t,” she told me. “Not yet.”

“I understand,” I said on reflex, but I didn’t…couldn’t; not ever. There they were, right in front of me, my woman and child, and I couldn’t even touch them, couldn’t hold them and let them know how much I’d missed them, how much I wanted to be with them.

My thoughts must have played out across my face because Karra took a half-step back. A cold chill nipped at my spine when she did. Watching her back away from me was a misery I could never have prepared for. It struck me as hard as any blow I’d ever been dealt. I drew in a deep breath, letting it settle into my lungs before I found the strength to speak again. Bile stung the back of my throat, anger rising up to devour my sorrow. There was no other way to deal with it.

“Why are you here?”

It was her turn to sigh. “You looked like you might be in trouble.”

The words bounced around inside my head, both pathetic and painful. Talk about mixed signals. “You’ve come to rescue
me
but I can’t come near you.” It wasn’t a question.

She nibbled on her lower lip, clearly realizing the awkwardness of what she intended. “I know, it’s just…”

It was weird seeing her so flustered, so lacking in confidence despite her willingness to deny me the chance to be with her, them. That wasn’t the Karra I knew. “Everything’s fine,” I lied. She didn’t need to know any more than that. My skull turned up the volume, deep tribal thumps setting my temples to dance.

“It’s not, though, Frank.” She shook her head. “That portal you have the little alien girl opening…there’s something not right about it.”

That was when I realized she’d been using CB to spy on me. I didn’t know whether to be pissed or glad she cared enough to peek on me through her link to Chatterbox. “You’ve been watching me?”

“I have,” she admitted, braving a step toward me. “I can feel its baleful energies through the connection. It’s not natural.”

I reached out for her hand but she snatched it away.

“Please, Frankie. I can’t. Not yet.”

A storm filled the empty space between us.

“Damn it, woman! I didn’t want to do it,” I shouted, not even caring that she crept further away. “He knew it was the only way to save you. Why can’t you see that? I didn’t want any of this.” I’d done it all to save Karra and still I’d lost her.

The uncertainty seared across her face was a spur in the side of my fury. I spun and slammed my fist into the nearest wall. Brick shattered, a gray fog enveloping my hand as it smashed its way through the wall. The scent of old dust filled my nose. I ripped it free, shards of rock and mortar showering my feet.

Karra stared at me through narrow eyes, the feather light touch of her senses tickling my skin. “Whatever you’re doing, Frankie, be careful.”

My rage filled my tongue with vitriol, but then I felt
her
.

A quiet, tiny blip drifted across my senses, so much like Karra and yet so different. Slow and steady, as though the whisper of a heartbeat, I could feel a willowy presence reaching out to me, reaching
for
me. My fury fell in its wake.

“A girl?”

Karra gave a slow nod, a silvery tear sliding lonely down her cheek.

“I—” Once more I reached out, but the look in moist Karra’s eyes kept me from drawing nearer. For all her indecision, she would hold true to her word. She wasn’t ready for
us
and there was nothing I could do to change her mind. My shoulders slumped as hope gave way inside, a withered slug beneath a hail of salt.

“You’re not your father, Frankie,” she told me. “Remember that and don’t become him. We need you to be you.”

She was gone before the words fully registered, the sound of my heart echoing sullenly in the silence of the alley.

Twelve

Fuck them!

The thought echoed in my skull, over and over, the words repeating, the sound building into a mantra, which threatened to overwhelm me.

“No,” I screamed, hoping to quiet the voice in my head but it wouldn’t be silenced.

Fuck them all.

My lungs ached as I tried to catch my breath. I hadn’t been ready to see Karra anymore than she’d been ready to see me. Her standing in the alley was the equivalent of stitches being torn from an ulcerous wound. I hurt, blood still oozing, the infection of love gnawing at my nerve endings and setting them aflame.

What the hell was I thinking?

There weren’t any happy endings in my world that didn’t come without an exchange of cash in a backroom massage parlor. I should have known better. Daddy Dearest had fucked us up the first time around, his feud with Longinus keeping me and Karra apart. Now it was my turn. I’d done what even Lucifer hadn’t tried: I took Longinus out of the world forever. As much as I wanted to believe Karra could get over her father being a part of me, it was delusional to think it was possible. Even if she had deep-seated daddy issues, I couldn’t imagine her wanting to be in a relationship with the demon who would forever feel like her father, his essence battering her senses on a daily basis.

My feet scraped the sidewalk as I made my way back to the asylum, the night quiet save for the continuing howl of distant emergency vehicles as they fought to contain the blaze at the power station. The streets were dark with only the rare flicker of candlelight behind curtained windows, the last survivors of the neighborhood hunkered down to wait out whatever shit storm had hit Old Town this time. They were getting used to it, Baalth’s presence having drawn more supernatural grief to the area than it deterred. He’d kept the peace, but he’d kept it by force. Now this Hobbs guy had stepped in and made a play, drawing me into it. If things kept going the way they were, there wouldn’t be an Old Town left to fight over. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I could stand to walk away from all of this.

Fuck you!

“Fuck me?” I answered the voice in my head. “No, fuck
you
.”

I laughed, realizing I was talking shit to myself, a nearby curtain fluttering at the commotion, a shadow slipping out of sight the instant my eyes lighted on it. The furtive movement only made me laugh harder.

Seeing Karra must have shaken something loose in my skull. While I doubted any psychological litmus test devised would find me in the normal range, I didn’t usually talk to myself; much. Well, I didn’t
argue
with myself; that often. A low chuckle spilled from my mouth, and I had to agree with me. The Planter’s guy would need to roll up for me to convince anyone there was someone more nuts than me out tonight.

I glanced around but it was just me and the almost invisible quaver of the settling curtain, which was probably a good thing. I was heading to an asylum, after all. I didn’t need anyone to check me in for good. It was bad enough that Rala—the alien from another planet—thought I was weird.

A few minutes later I’d made it to Gailbraith without running into anyone, having someone put a bullet in my head, and I’d mostly contained my chitters. Mostly. They slipped out occasionally when I wasn’t paying attention, kind of like my throat was birthing baby hyena farts. At least I couldn’t taste them. They might have smelled, though, given the look Rala gave me when I jumped into the surgical theater.

She let out a little squeak and clutched Chatterbox to her chest, stumbling back into the light setup, starting it bouncing. “What is with you people?”

“I see you got the generators working.” The lights flickered for an instant before coming back to full. “Sort of.”

Rala shook her head. “Uh, I didn’t—”

“That would be me.”

I turned to see Veronica stroll through the doors at the far end of the room, opposite the shattered glass balcony. Her eyes took the measure of me, starting at my feet and working her way up to my face.

“Outside of a little blood on your collar there, you don’t look the worse for wear. Did Hobbs go down easy?”

“He didn’t even bother to show up.” I touched my neck where Katon had cut me, feeling the bloody remnants crusted there. “This was…something else.” For some reason, I didn’t feel like sharing what happened between me and Katon or any of the rest of what went down. I could only imagine Veronica opening her mouth about it and making me want to punt her back to Hell where I wouldn’t have to listen to her.

She shrugged like she wasn’t interested, but I saw her cast a lightning quick look Rala’s direction, her eyes popping back to me in a flash. “Want to know what I fou—”

I raised a hand to silence her, an ephemeral pulse making the hairs on my arm tingle. “Do you feel that?” Rala seemed to shrink in on herself, her arms wrapping tight about her narrow chest, I growled and followed the vague sense of mystical energy that led me through the door Veronica had strolled through.

“Frank?” Veronica called out over my shoulder, but I kept going, pushing the door aside and slipping into the hallway beyond.

A couple rooms down the hall the trail came to an end. My head swiveled to the door to the left—it’s always the left—its frame emanating wisps of magic, the scent so vague it was clear it was being muffled, but not very well. Veronica and Rala crept up behind me.

“Am I going to regret opening this door?”

Veronica cleared her throat.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” As if I actually expected anything different coming from my ex-wife.

The knob turned easily and the door swung wide, the misty sense of magic only barely growing stronger. Just inside the room lie an old school magical portal like the one Lucifer had built at my house, designed for quick and easy access to a limited number of locations. It was the shuttle of mystical portals. Dark brown/black fluid defined the lines of the pentagram, the gate empowered to operate on its own. Sketched sigils dotted the walls in a way that explained the tiny drifts of magical energy seeping from the room. It was as though a wizard had sneezed out a bunch of wards, the boogery magic landing at random.

“This your work, too?” I asked Veronica, a little surprised at how sloppy it was.

She nodded. “Rala helped.”

Rala slid Chatterbox up so that his face appeared to replace hers. “Only a little.” CB spewed rancid zerbers my direction, dark dots of spit reflected in the magic’s glow.

“While I see the need for the short bus given the combined intellect of the room, what’s the point of it?”

“Rala needs an escape hatch.”

I felt my eyebrow imitate Spock. “For what?”

“Seriously, Frank?” Veronica let out a very pissed sounding sigh. “You damn near got her killed back at the safe house. I want her to have a way out the next time you feel like summoning alien creatures during a firefight. You made her fly away, right through the worst of it without bothering to check if she got out safely. She could have been killed.”

My gaze went to Rala. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. “Look at her; nothing happened.”

She raised an arm, pointing to a couple dark spots, both smaller than quarters. “I did get a little singed—”

“See? She’s fine,” I said.

“And Chatterbox is a fairy princess.”

“Ppuuuurrrrrttttyyyyyy.”

“You’re not helping,” Veronica snapped at the head. “I just don’t want her stuck here waiting on you to save her ass because we all know how that will work out.”

“You sure you’re not part harpy?”

Veronica growled. “Now you’re being mean.” She wrapped an arm around Rala, pulling the girl closer. CB’s eyes snapped to her chest as if they had magnets in them. “Did you drag this poor girl across the universe so she could die here in Old Town?”

“Of course not,” I told her. “I never plan that far ahead.”

Veronica groaned and Rala flashed me a WTF look. Even Chatterbox peeled his gaze from Veronica’s tits to give me a dirty look.

“You’re responsible for her. What part of that do you not get?”

“Fine, I’ll go to the store for diapers and formula.” I glanced over at Rala. “Need to be burped little girl? Shoulder or lap?”

The look on her face was a cross between a rabid skunk taking a shit and Paris Hilton’s sex face.

“You’re an asshole, Frank.”

I was. Had a card and everything, but I couldn’t see my membership benefits being of any interest to Veronica so I raised my hands in surrender. “All right, already. I get it. No more fricasseed dragon wings—”

“Wyvern.”

“
Whatever.
” The estrogen was getting so deep I was craving chocolate and a Laurell K Hamilton book. I glanced at Rala, peering past Chatterbox’s fuming face. “I’m not trying to get you killed…I promise.”

“
Pppiinnnkkkyy ppprroommmisse?
”

“Jesus Christ, all of you.” And here I thought my head was killing me earlier. “I’ll fishhook your earhole if it’ll get you to shut the hell up, Chatterbox.”

CB’s lower lip jutted out, the blackened splits like shimmering worms.

I turned on Veronica and growled. “Tell me what you found before you came back to play mama.”

“Not until you apologize.” Her hands slid to her hips, breasts pushed out as far as CB’s lip. She was stonewalling hard.

I’d seen that look far too often to think I would get anywhere with her, so I pulled an Ash. “Okay…I
mumble, mumble, mumble
. There, I said the words,” I shouted as the ceiling.

“Are you kidding me? That shit didn’t even work in the movie, Frank.”

“Yeah!” Rala jumped in, though I was pretty damn certain she hadn’t even seen
Army of Darkness
. I couldn’t even get her to watch
Beetlejuice
, the big scaredy zebra.