Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (43 page)

When we arrived, we found the front glass doors locked against us. 
Tempered safety glass.  Very strong.
  I warmed up my
Dragon Fire
tat, and felt the sensation of ants biting behind my eyeballs, stomping along my optic nerves.  The pain went away, leaving my eyes watery.  I blinked the tears away.  Real men cry on the inside.

I thrust a hand out and pulsed out several fireballs.  The dragon fire was hotter than normal flame, clinging to a glass panel beside the door like white-golden napalm, fanning out high and low. 

Vivian stared in through the door which lacked the darker tinting.  “They’re buzzing around in there like someone smoked their hive to steal the honey.”

“Screw the honey.  We’re here to kill,” I said.

“Their guns are coming out,” Osamu reported.

“That’s why me and my shield are going in first,” I said.

The fire died out as I pulled back on the magic I was feeding it.  A big oval hole was left, with dripping threads of molten glass, like someone was trying to bar our entry.  Osamu summoned his demon sword and cleared the gaping maw of the window for me.  And then I was through, my red shell shimmering to life as sizzling lead slugs fanned over it, getting deflected.

I yelled out, “Hi, I’m here to beat the shit out of your boss, so would you mind fucking off please?”

There was no receptionist, just gunmen.  A dozen guns spat fire, barking like rabid dogs.  The rounds slapped my shield, were deflected, and used up more energy bouncing off the marble walls.  Several shooters cursed as ricochets sliced them in passing, or gouged deep into their bodies.  The blood smell in the air made many of the dhampyr bare fangs as their eyes burned pink in sudden hunger.

Their weapons ran dry pretty much at the same time, a fact I knew when my shield dropped.  I stepped out of the way and pointed.  Osamu exploded past me.  His blade slashed an X pattern that literally disarmed two dhampyr.  Amputated stubs pulsed bright, arterial red blood into the air.  Crumpling, the two dhampyr soldiers died on their feet as Osamu’s demon blade drank the silver mist of their souls.

Vivian passed me, a gun in each hand.   Her weapons bucked, littering the floor with bouncing, brass shell casing.

Josh came in last, still in human form, holding a shot gun, another one strapped to his back.  We were holding him in reserve.  With the last of the dhampyr dead—or wounded and slowly healing from massive damage—the resistance was broken. 

Osamu went around, demon sword humming in ecstasy as he lopped off heads.  This level of thoroughness meant that we wouldn’t have to wade through this bunch again if we had to fight our way back out.  Mercy has no place on a mission against superior numbers.  A couple of the decapitated soldiers had been women.  The one with A-cups didn’t bother me much.  The gal with D-cups all but falling out of her black shirt and red bra made me want to cry.  This wasn’t the way I wanted to fuck with her. 

Such a waste.  My penis is sad.

We took the elevator, Vivian pressing the button for the penthouse.  Vivian and I were both using the new Beretta PX4s.  My clips were fully loaded.  She reloaded hers as we rode upward.  I activated my
Dragon Sight
tat, needing to spot magical traps before we blundered into them.  The price I paid for the magic evoked sympathy in me for Prometheus.  It felt like my liver, too, were being ripped out by a giant bird of prey.

“Sonnuvabeast!” I hissed.

Osamu looked at me briefly, with little interest.  He was used to such outbursts, knowing how I paid for my dragon spells.

Joshua and Vivian didn’t bother even to glance my way.  They got to either side of the elevator doors. 

There were several stops the car tried to make, but each time, I pressed the button for the top, overriding the stops, keeping the doors from opening.  We reached the top floor and I stood there, my red shield hazing into view.  The doors opened to an empty hallway.  I stepped out to see if I could draw enemy fire.  I looked left and right across a lobby designed to screen guests before they got to see the big boss.

Empty. 

I softly sang,
“
Oh, Mason?  Come out, come out wherever you are.”

He didn’t.  That meant we had to go hunting.  There were several doors to choose from.   I motioned Joshua to checked the room on the right.  A similar signal sent Vivian to the left.  Osamu waited with me, as both doors were opened.  Josh and Vivian went in, and a minute later returned.  They shook their heads no.  No alarms.  No guards.  No resistance. 

And so far, no magical traps.

That left the central door.  I went in first.  We paused to view a living room on par with a luxury hotel’s best.  The walls were a deep-ocean blue.  The right wall had a large screen TV on it in a living island where a pair of burgundy couches faced off against each other with a huge leather ottoman in between.  The left wall had a few doors.  The far left corner had a formal dining room set with high-backed chairs.  Straight ahead, the farthest wall had sliding glass doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the city. 

And still no Mason. 

We moved forward.  An arch to the right showed a kitchen.  I went that way to check for guards.  Josh and Vivian went to check the doors to the left.  I was beginning to wonder if Mason
had gotten smart and skipped town.

Vivian kicked in her door, and stared in. 

Josh did the same.

“Guys,” Vivian called, “over here.”

We hurried to join her.  Even before I got there, I smelled pungent death and knew what we’d find.

Vivian put away her weapons.  Nonchalantly, she strolled into a home office ahead of us.  A headless, male dhampyr sat behind the desk in a leather throne of a chair.  He wore an expensive suit—once black, now brown from a lot of dried blood—his navy shirt had been ripped open, along with his chest.  His heart was also missing.  I couldn’t tell if it was Mason without the head since I didn’t have a crime lab in my pocket.

We fanned out.  A moment later, I found the head in a corner trash can behind him.  The head belonged to Mason.  It wasn’t smiling.  I wasn’t either.  “Body’s been here for a while, maybe a week.”

Joshua moved closer to Mason’s body.  He said, “Air conditioning is turned way up in here to slow decay, insects haven’t had access, but from the discoloration of the skin, and the blisters on the skin, I’d say you’re right.  I can also smell the scent of his killer.”

Well, I had a crime lab in my pocket after all.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Brielle.”

I nodded.  “No use looking here for the dream stone.  She’ll have taken it.  Probably killed Mason just to get it, otherwise, he’d have displaced her as leader of the pack.”

“But Mason can’t have been dead for a week,” Vivian said.  “We’ve seen him several times since we got here.  And we haven’t been in town that long.”

“Only one thing makes sense,” I said.  “The Mason we’ve been interacting with wasn’t really him.”

“An imposter?” Josh asked.

I shook my head no.  “We were deceived by a walking dream created by Brielle using the stone.”  I remembered the woman-shaped mist that escaped me outside of the White Lotus Restaurant.  “Vivian, she’s the one working with your father.  With her on his side, using the dream stone, he didn’t need the wolves anymore.  What do you want to bet that he somehow lured the Spirit Bear to the wolf compound to get rid of them?  They knew he was in town.  That made them a liability once he decided to change allies.”

“Damn!” she said.  “It makes sense.”

“Let’s get out of here.”  We returned to the outer lobby.  The elevator had run down the shaft and was now returning.

Joshua said, “Company coming.”

“They’ll be in the stairwells, too.”  I thought about things and devised a hasty plan.  We needed to move fast.  Better not to have Josh change to liger
now.  After all, I had a job that need strength, and Vivian’s was far above human level.  I turned to her.  “Vivian, I need you to pry open the elevator shaft doors here before the car arrives.”

She silently leaped to them, whipped out her combat knife, and forced it in with a scream of metal.  That gave her strength focus.  Soon, she had a gap her fingers could get in, then her shoulder and head.  And then the doors were rolling back in their groove.  The shaft was on full display, the cables moving as the machinery ran.  One by one, I pulled the pins on all my grenades and dropped them down the shaft.  Seeing what I was doing, Josh added his own.

And then we were running back, ducking for cover.  The grenades detonated in the shaft.  Shrapnel rained inside it.  The steel cables on the elevator were shredded.  I waited, counting the seconds until the car hit bottom.

Such a beautiful sound.

“To the stairs” I said.  “Let’s see how many more of them insist on dying to keep us from getting out.”

There were about twenty more dead by the time we reached the ground floor.  Most had M14s with suppressors that did no good against my shield.  I simply warned my guys; “Close your eyes,” and pulled the pins on some flash bangs that put out high UV light.”  Dhampyrs shared the vampire’s sensitivity to ultra violet radiation.  Pulling her head inside her coat spared Vivian discomfort and blindness. 

We strolled out of the building.  Vivian and I stowed our weapons away under our longcoats.  Josh didn’t bother.  On the next block, we passed a meter maid.  She froze in shock seeing Josh’s shotguns.  She relaxed when Josh flashed a federal badge at her, saying, “Don’t worry about it.”

Soon we were back at our vehicles, driving off on the next leg of the mission.

Brielle, you’ve got something of mine and I’m coming to get it.