Demon Squad 6 The Best of Enemies (15 page)

Rala covered her mouth as the banging and noise grew louder and louder. “They’re doing
it
!” she shouted between her fingers, the wisp of a giggle slipping out.

Veronica howled and the sound stabbed me in the ears. She was doing exactly what I’d asked of her—what I’d told her to do—but I hadn’t expected her to be so…loud. She was clearly going out of her way to be spiteful as she’d never screamed that loud in her life.

Rala started to get up, but I growled at her.

“Translate the damn book, girl.” I glared until she dropped back into a squat, tucking the tome into her lap again with a huff.

My skull resounded with a blast beat of double bass as I listened to Veronica sex up the vampire. I didn’t know if I was jealous, angry, or disgusted but the sound was making my stomach roil.

“I’ll be back,” I told Rala as I stormed out the door, slamming it shut behind me. Half-tempted to lock the damn thing, I hoped Little Orphan Alien would do what I told her instead of running off to watch Veronica rut with a corpse.

My body chilled at the thought, and I hurried down the hall and into the surgical theater, jumping up through the broken window to put some distance between Veronica’s noise and my ears. It seemed as if the whole building shook with the sound. It wasn’t until I slipped up the stairs, the fire door closing at my back, that it faded from my ears. I stumbled out into the early morning air, the sky still dark, and dragged in a deep breath, hoping to chase the echoes out of my head. A dozen blocks had fallen behind me before the image of what Veronica was doing vacated my skull. It was
disturbing
.

That thought stopped me cold.

I went over to a nearby curb and dropped down, a strange sense of dislocation falling over me. It suddenly felt as if I was very, very drunk. My brain sloshed inside my head like a drowning goldfish. I pictured Veronica having sex and felt a wave of nausea boil up in my guts. That had never happened before. It was almost surreal.

“Are you all right, young Trigg?”

It took me a second to realize someone had even spoken, and a moment after that to recognize the voice. It did nothing to confirm my sobriety.

“Duke Forcalor? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Are you okay?” The duke asked again, coming over to stand before me, a hand settling on my shoulder.

I glanced up at him. As always, he was clothed in the finest of silk outfits, the paragon of comfort with shimmering sleeves and slip on sandals. His long white hair was tied back tight, lending him a youthful appearance. His clean-shaven, unlined face added to the illusion. His normally expressionless mask, however, seemed to have a few dings in it. He hadn’t come down from Heaven to catch up on old times.

“Define
okay
.”

The duke let out a weak chuckle but none of its amusement reached his eyes. “I had hoped we might talk.”

“Of course.” I patted the sidewalk alongside me, the world still spinning just enough that I didn’t dare get to my feet. I thought about what Scarlett had said, but I’d felt fine up until right then.

Forcalor shook his head, choosing to stand. He stood stiffly, almost as if he were at attention, a drill sergeant’s crispness to his posture, his fingers interlaced before him. His gaze met mine for an instant before drifting away. I could sense his hesitance as though it were something palpable.

“What is it?”

He sighed, a sad smile gracing his lips. “I never imagined I would find myself in this situation, young Trigg.”

My heart pounded in my chest. I’d known the duke my entire life. He’d been my mentor, the man who’d trained me in the ways of the Demonarch, taught me all I knew that hadn’t come from the end of a fist. I watched him swallow hard and realized what Scarlett had warned me about had come to pass.

“Is it Heaven?” I asked.

He nodded. “I sent your cousin to warn you, but I fear Metatron has little faith she can turn you toward the path of the righteous.”

“Little late for that, don’t ya think?”

“I would say so,” he answered with a hint of a smile, “but your redemption isn’t Heaven’s primary concern.” He dropped into a squat in front of me, which was good. I was getting tired of staring up at him. “Circumstances have changed, Frank, and you know more than most how volatile our existence has become since God’s departure. Gabriel’s betrayal has Heaven on edge. Now with your sudden…” he trailed off.

I waited a moment for him to continue, but he seemed reluctant to do so. “Just spit it out, Forcalor. I’m still me.”

“That has yet to be determined, Trigg.”

And there it was, all the cards laid out onto the table. I stiffened as I felt the coals of my anger ignite.

Forcalor must have seen it because he raised his hands and took a short step back. “I’m not here to challenge you, young Trigg. In fact, Metatron doesn’t even know I’ve come. He would be furious to learn I was here, but I needed to see for myself.”

“See what exactly?” I was losing my patience.

“If there is still hope for you.”

The words were a slap to the face. “You’ve written me off.” It was a sour realization to know my mentor, someone I’d looked up to my entire life, had already scratched me off the Christmas list because of some bullshit lateral move in my family tree. I stood, the duke rising with me. “Sure, it turns out I’m Lucifer’s son and not some beloved nephew like we all thought, and yeah, maybe I am carting around Longinus’ magic, but that doesn’t change who I am…who I’ve always been.” My pulse raced.

“Metatron would disagree,” he answered. “And I believe Scarlett might, as well. She is worried about you, and I believe it is for just cause.”

I stared at him, wondering what everyone saw that I didn’t. I’d done nothing to threaten Heaven or even Earth. All I’d done was stake my claim to Old Town against a vampire rival and chase the tail of Lucifer’s magical book.

“There is a sense of—”

“Triggaltheron!”

Forcalor’s face appeared out of the darkness before me. His hands gripped my shoulders tight. I shrugged him off and stepped back, his somber expression swimming in my vision. My skin tingled where he’d touched me, spider-like tickles running down the length of my arms, radiating into my fingers. Bile seared the back of my throat, its bitter aftertaste stinging my tongue.

“Are you all right?” the duke asked, and I wondered if I’d dreamed the last few minutes, our conversation circling back around to the beginning.

“I’m fine,” I told him, though for the first time since I’d come back to Earth, I had to admit, if only to myself, that maybe I wasn’t. “I’m tired, is all. Dimensional travel is rough on a guy, you know?”

Forcalor stood rigid, no hint of his thoughts bleeding through to his expression. “I pray that’s all it is, Trigg, but I fear there might be more to it than that.” The intensity of his stare bored into my skull, and I felt as though I were a teenager again. I didn’t like it.

“Don’t worry about me, Forcalor, I’m good,” I told him, forcing a smile while waving him off. “Look, I was kind of in the middle of something I need to get back to, so if you don’t mind…”

“Of course.” He sighed, nodding. “Of course, Trigg, but please, be careful.” The duke glanced to the sky. “Metatron has tasked Uriel with the guardianship of Earth. It is his duty to ensure nothing like Gabriel’s rebellion occurs ever again.”

My eyes followed Forcalor’s, the threat buried in his innocuous phrase sinking in as dawn crept over the horizon. Metatron had given Uriel the authority to take matters into his own hands if he believed Heaven was in danger. He might as well have given a book of matches to a pyro. Shit was gonna get real hot, real soon.

Uriel hated me because of who I was, because of what Lucifer had done to Heaven and the Tree of Life. Now that is was confirmed that I was the Devil’s son and not some off-to-the-side relative like everyone had been led to believe, I had a pretty good idea Uriel would find it in himself to hate me even more. It was also likely that ol’ Mister Flamesword would muster up probable cause and pay me visit in the near future. If the duke was busting my balls playing good cop, I could only imagine Uriel’s bad cop routine would involve a cavity search elbows deep. Even with Longinus’ power, I didn’t stand a chance of warding off the archangel. He would kick my ass on my best day.

“Lay low and be smart,” Forcalor told me. “Uriel has a fantastic view from up there.”

I nodded and thanked the duke for the warning. He was gone a moment later, returning to Heaven with a flash of celestial light.

I turned toward the asylum and started back. If Uriel was looking for a fight, it was pretty much a guarantee that opening some alien portal passed on to me by Lucifer would set his happy ass on kill mode. I still had no idea why Lucifer had given the book to me or what lay on the other side of the doorway, but Uriel wasn’t someone I wanted to cross. Suicide by angel isn’t my thing.

My footsteps matched the beat of my heart as I hurried back to Gailbraith to stop Rala before she got any further along with the translation. Now that Uriel was watching Earth, I couldn’t risk any more of the alien critters sneaking out of the portal. We’d have to shut all that down until I was certain I could shield it from Heaven. It sucked, but I hadn’t been given much of an option. The duke made it clear Uriel’s finger was on the trigger, ready to nuke me from orbit. I couldn’t take that chance.

I’d have to be content with a win over Hobbs.

Fifteen

The walk back was slow going. My thoughts swirled, a murder of crows pecking my eyes out from the inside. My head had been one big pincushion since I’d come back from Feluris, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I’d picked up some kind of mutant superbug or something while I was there. Rala probably had fleas. Alien fleas.

Demons aren’t known for getting sick, only the rarest, most vicious of diseases able to get even the slightest foothold before our immune systems hammer the cooties into submission. There’s no telling, though, what God might have thought up over the course of his multi-verse experiment. What had once been hard and fast rules about how things worked were now just guesses. It was possible I’d caught something, which might explain the lack of sleep and general blah feeling. The thing, whatever it was, hadn’t really impacted my magic, the power as strong as it was in Rala’s dimension, but there was no doubt I was wearing down physically. I didn’t imagine all the stress helped, either. It had been a rough homecoming, and I certainly hadn’t stuck the landing.

I had DRAC breathing down my neck, the DSI, Heaven even, not to mention what was going on with Karra and the baby, which certainly wasn’t making me feel any better. A quick shake of the head knocked that last thought loose. I didn’t want to go there; not now. There was nothing happy down that road.

So far, the return trip to Earth had been one big kick in the rectum with a pointy boot, and I’d accomplished nothing more than bringing down a two-bit opportunist with pointy teeth. And even that wasn’t a real win since he’d managed to hold back some piece of information that was obviously important to his master plan. Worse still, if I wanted to find out what that was, I’d have to go back and face Veronica.

There was something about all that which disturbed the hell out of me, made me queasy. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the thought of seeing her with Hobbs made my stomach churn. It was unnatural. Every time the image crept into my head, I felt this strange, almost oppressive, virulence flowing through me like I’d been given a hot flu enema. It made me want to gag. My insides felt mushy and, if you can believe it, violated. I shook off the encroaching chill as tiny explosions warmed my torso.

The last bit had less to do with my mental state than it did the rounds of machine gun fire that slammed into my chest.

My head so far up my ass I could lick my tonsils, I hadn’t even noticed the guy standing in the middle of the sidewalk, AK-47 at the ready. He’d hit me ten times before my body and brain synced up and I staggered back around the corner to escape the hail of bullets, clutching at my wounds. Smoke spilled from the holes and blood followed. They were like red hot pokers buried in my flesh. Pain flared from each, blending to become a single agony, but I hadn’t even needed to see the red spill from my body to realize the bullets hadn’t been anything special. There was none of the black ooze that accompanied magical weaponry, and my body was already pushing the slugs out, the holes stitching together from the inside. The first of the spent rounds
plinked
to the pavement as the machine gunner turned the corner.

I’m not sure what he expected, but I sincerely doubted he thought he’d find me standing there with a grin on my face like he’d dropped the soap.

Before he could react, I ripped the rifle out of his arms and spun it around, driving the barrel up under his ribs. I depressed the trigger as the gun sunk into his guts with a wet sputter, blood and all sorts of fragrant juices gushed out of him at top and bottom. His neck and shoulders were obliterated, bits of flesh and blood spewing into the air like a morbid sprinkler.

Baalth always told me blood makes the grass grow, but there wouldn’t be any greenery springing up on the asphalt today.

Using what was left of the merc’s body as a temporary shield, I bolted back the way I’d come. There was no way he was alone, and I wanted to get a good view of what I was up against before it all came down on my head. Turned out, I didn’t even need my meat shield or a magical one. I dropped the mercenary as soon as I’d made it around the corner, the opposition doing nothing to disguise their presence. They sprawled out before me, a legion of were-whatevers showing me their teeth. It was an orthodontist’s wet dream.

“Oh, look, a furry convention.”

There must have been a handful of different were-varieties staring at me with red eyes gleaming in the early morning darkness. Werewolves made up the majority of the group, dark snouts filling the air with more than enough grunts to backtrack the gay porn industry. Silvered claws were arrayed across the lines. I spotted a weretiger crouched near the edge of the critter parade and a werepanther near the rear, its sleek blue-black fur standing out in sharp contrast to the lighter colors that abounded. There weren’t any of the bigger breeds like bears or gorillas, but there were plenty of werehounds, which were smaller and less fearsome than their werewolf cousins that occupied the more common spectrum of the canine litter. They yipped and barked and acted pretty much like you’d expect of a bunch of strung out Chihuahuas.