Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (23 page)

Recovering her balance, crouching, she turned my way, eyes blazing with yellow-green light, her smile a hard rictus of pain and pleasure.  A shaft of green fire speared off her hand, but went for Vivian, not me.  The assassin called down at me, “Watch me roast the flesh from her bones, and suck the marrow out.  That’s the best part, you know?”

I shifted my stance and saw Vivian back-flip away faster than a human can run.  No one was ever going to find it easy to take
her
down.  Looking back again, I saw the assassin sweep her arm toward where Josh had fallen.

But he was on his feet and leaping for the loose dangle of steel netting above.  His massive claws snagged it and he wrenched hard as he fell again, using his weight, about a thousand pounds, to tear a long strip of mesh free.  He landed and tossed the mesh at the assassin.  She met it with a sheet of fire that turned the mesh into a drizzle of molten steel.  The sheet of fire blocked her view of Josh, but I could see him leaping onto the side of her train, running on it with all of his claws digging in for support. 

I needed to get the bitch’s attention back on me, giving Josh his shot.  I warmed up my
Dragon Fire
tat, a sensation not unlike being clubbed down by a wrecking ball.  Fortunately, these payments for magic were more ghosts in the brain than actual damage.  If I’d been a real dragon, there would have been no such cost attached.

Dropping my shield to attack could get me killed.  I had to depend on her cruelty in not wanting to end me before I’d suffered enough. 

The red pearl I wore heated up, the Red Lady’s way of letting me know how much she hated my plan.  Her gift, the obsidian bottle, popped into my hand, a tempting distraction.

I threw the bottle at the assassin, and followed it up with a blast of dragon fire.  I expected the woman’s green flame to vaporize the bottle, liquor and all.  I didn’t expect the black bottle to blur through the green fire unscathed, only to break across her face, cutting deep.  The liquid inside washed over her, dampening her torso, displacing green fire, making her vulnerable to the unnatural heat of my dragon fire.  She screamed and covered her face as my fire smashed into her, toppling her backwards.  She fell from sight on the far side of the train.

The heavy smoke—no longer thinned by my shield—burned my throat, making me cough.  Sweat dampened my clothes, dripping down my face.  I’d never felt a flame this hot, not even my dragon flame. 

Recovering, I heard her voice ringing with strength, despite her pain.  “
Mishi-makwa
, help me!”

A moment later, a pyre of green fire roared up from behind the train.  Josh was on top now, in position to look over, but he pulled back, turning his face away.  The inner wall of the depot behind the assassin was burning heavily.  The whole place was going up quickly.  And through the clogging smoke and green glare, a great white shadow rose, a sixteen-foot beast with red eyes.  It opened its jaws, baring seven-inch fangs as it roared a challenge.  Then the pyre was tamed, clinging to its fur coat like a lover.  And it was running. 

Another coughing fit doubled me over.  It was hard to see, but the woman was probably riding the beast, protecting it from her own fire as they made their getaway.  I made a mental estimate.  About thirty-six hundred pounds, maybe more. 
I’m not sure we’re prepared to catch up with that thing.   Her partner’s even bigger than the liger.  We need a damn rocket launcher.

It ran through another black iron fence, melting a hole, turning toward the river.  I heard Vivian scream, and realized that it had battered her out of the way, and she was burning. 

I ran flat out toward her, willing to let the enemy get away, for now. 

Josh surged past me, getting there first.  He used his great furry mass to smother her, crushing out the flames.  Even unnatural fire needed oxygen to burn.  A human would have been killed by it all.  As a dhampyr, Vivian might survive, but she was going to be hurt—bad. 

We were outside in an area lit by streetlights.  The depot behind us was a total write-off, the green fire now burning an ordinary orange.  The air was filling with the wail of fire and police sirens.   Josh rolled over, shedding burnt fur, slowly, painfully reverting to human form.  Vivian’s hair was badly seared.  She had a burn on the side of her face.  Her top had caught monstrous claws, getting burned and shredded at once like some of the flesh underneath.  Fat curls of smoke wound up from her torso.  She groaned in pain, grimacing, hissing as she clutched her wound.

I threw my coat to Josh.  He tied it on to cover his privates, a wrap that only exposed the outside of one leg.  “I’ll get the car.  The dhampyrs will know best how to treat this.”  He sprinted away. 

I knelt by Vivian, and stretched out over her, keeping my weight off her, and activated my
Demon Wings
tats.  The cost of the magic was a crisp, soul-curdling pain that sloshed through me like acid.  The pain receded and I knew we were both cloaked from perception.  Eyes would turn away, seeing nothing.  Anyone about to step on us would find themselves turning suddenly away with no reason.  I watched Vivian’s face, seeing her pale-faced agony on display.  I listened to her shallow gasps of breath.  People think I’m a monster who enjoys the pain of others.  Normally, that’s true.  

Even
now…

S
melling the iron of blood, I looked down at her hands, and saw her own blood soaked them.  She said, “Don’t … worry.  Bleeding will stop … soon.”

That wasn’t the problem. 
I could tell the smell strained her self-control, making her hungry, lengthening her fangs, deepening her eyes to a glowing pink that bordered on red.  She stared at my neck with great interest.

SIXTEEN

What’s a little blood between friends?

                                   
        
—
Caine Deathwalker

Fire trucks screamed closer, followed by police cruisers.  Red and blue lights strobed in the twilight.  This back corner area had been deserted by the tourists, but at the commotion, a lot of people were drifting over from the cafes, stores, and riverboat docks.  As firemen unloaded their gear, Josh returned.  A policeman stopped him from getting too close, and launched into pointed questions on why he was mostly naked behind the wheel of the black sedan I’d borrowed from Mason.

I knew it hurt Vivian to be picked up, rolled against my chest, and carried, but she made a muffled growl and stayed silent after that, biting her lip.  All Slayers were like that, heroically stoic.  Me, I’d have been screaming for hard drugs.  I carried her to the car, trusting my demon-wings tat to keep the cop from noticing me, Vivian, and the back car door opening by
itself.
  I stowed her in the back seat, slammed the door, and went around to get in the front passenger door.

Halfway through his tirade on public indecency, the cop broke off, his stare finding Vivian in the back seat, looking like death warmed over a time or two.  The cop went for his gun.

I extended more energy into my magic, draining my lifeforce perilously. 

The cop looked dazed, staring about like he’d lost something, and forgotten just what it was.  In a distracted fog, the cop returned to the fire.  We skirted the fire trucks and shot down Front Street, passing another railroad station, this one painted with the false-fronts of old time stores.  We passed the docks with the two paddle-wheel boats, then turned left down a side street.  At the edge of Old Sac, we drove down into a tunnel, entering downtown
Sacramento at the backside of the K Street Mall.  We circled around to get to K Street, slowing for oblivious pedestrians.  Getting onto K Street, I dropped my stealth magic.  People pointed at the car that had just materialized in front of them.

“People need to get a life,” I said, as Josh floored the pedal. 

We reached the Darth Vader building.  Josh parked us on the sidewalk, near the front doors, telling me, “Back in a minute.”  He left the engine running, bailing out of the driver’s door.

I turned in the seat to see how Vivian was holding up.  She’d pulled herself forward.  Her black hair was plastered along her face, her head poking between the front seats.  Her clammy skin looked mostly white, with the faintest tinge of pale green—as if some lethal element from the assassin’s green fire had poisoned her body.  Her eyes burned electric pink, dangerously alive with surfacing hunger.  She reached and her nails dug into my shoulder. 

But my protective shield didn’t activate.  Vivian still had control.  I was impressed.

“It’s okay,” I said.  “Take some blood if you need it to heal.”

She shuddered.  “No.  This far gone, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from draining you dry.”

“Then I’ll stop you when I need to.”

Her eyes dimmed, turning their normal black as the human in her struggled up.  “Can you?”

I smiled with reckless abandon.  “Sure.”

“Okay, then…”  She shoved herself back, dragging me halfway into the backseat.  I lay awkwardly in her arms.  Her mouth opened wide and her white fangs lengthened.  Her mouth lunged.  Teeth buried themselves in my neck—painful and erotic as well. 

The teeth pulled out and her mouth closed on the wounds, her tongue slathering across the punctures.  That part wasn’t so bad.  A little euphoria set in.  Like vamps, dhampyr saliva contained a chemical high that tended to take some of the fight out of their victims.  It was too bad she couldn’t use it to tone down her own pain.  I could tell she was getting into the feeding by the hand she used to squeeze my ass.

Damn.  This was definitely a new side to Vivian.  Unfortunately, it was a side inherited from her vampire father, whoever that had been.  I knew when the emergency passed, she’d be mortified by this memory.  If I was a better person, I’d never bring it up again with her.  Too bad I wasn’t a better person.

“Okay,” I told her, “that’s enough.  You need to stop, right now.”

She kept on, slurping my blood like a starving predator.

“I hate to do this,” I said, “but if you don’t stop now, I’m going to punch you in those damaged ribs.”

She ignored me.

I punched her.

She jerked, face getting whiter, if that were possible, hissing, eyes closing in agony. 

I squirmed into the back seat, pulled out a PPK, and thumbed off the safety.  If I had to fire, I’d try to hit something not too vital.