H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (134 page)

I blamed it on being spiked with garlic and
holy water. And I blamed it on Parker.

But mostly I blamed it on myself, and my
desire to play hero.

Who is the sucker now, Spider?

I was balanced in the crook of the tree
between three fat branches, and I was now solid enough that I could
feel my skin reforming and growing whole again. I tried to push
harder with my hand, to make the statue smash Parker like a bug,
but apparently my brief power of transference was gone. The effort
had drained what last little bit of reserves I had.

Now I was helpless again, intoxicated with
garlic, and feeling limp and heavy. And the statue sagged a little
and returned to its former position, once again stiff and cold and
dumb.

Sort of like me.

Below me came the scruffing sound as Parker
resumed her climb, and I didn’t even have enough strength to tell
her to go to hell.

I had a feeling I might get there first.

Chapter Twenty-five

Who knew demons could climb so well?

As she sped swiftly up the pine tree, using
branches like ladder rungs, I weighed my options. At full strength,
I liked my chances against her, even if she was wielding a stake.
I’ve fought worse, truth be known, and I’ve had decades to perfect
my fighting technique.

As it stood, I realized I had one option.
And only one option.

When she was about ten feet below me, I
positioned myself directly over her. My plan was simple: I was
going to drop down on her like a vampiric A-bomb. We would crash
through the trees together, and if I was lucky—very, very lucky—I
might seriously hurt her. If my guess was right, Parker—or whatever
the demon’s real name was—was using a young woman’s body as its
host. Whether or not this young woman had permitted the demon in, I
didn’t know. But if her host was indeed human, well, human bodies
can break.

And a broken human body didn’t do a demon
much good.

If I happened to kill an innocent person in
the process, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

I was just preparing myself for what I
expected to be one hell of a shitty fall when Parker looked up. Her
eyes were completely black and filled with hate. She must have
suspected what I was up to, because she held up her hand.

“Wait, you fool,” she said, speaking around
the stake in her mouth.

I couldn’t do much in my present poisoned
state, but one thing I could do was let go of a tree and let
gravity take over. Also, I didn’t take orders from demon-possessed
girls wielding stakes.

I shook my head and very nearly eased from
my precarious perch on a branch that was already sagging
mightily.

Holding on to a tree limb with one hand, she
removed the stake from her mouth. “Wait, dammit. All I really need
is your blood. The ceremony was just for show, just for that idiot
Erasmus.”

I wanted to say something clever and snappy,
to show that I was ready for action. Except I was too weak to even
talk. Hell, I was almost too weak to keep myself from falling on
top of her anyway.

She anxiously looked up at the moon shining
in sections through the tangled tree branches. “Time is literally
running out. And vampires take much too long to die. All that
screaming and writhing and hissing. All I need is your blood. A
drop. And I’ll be on my way.”

I stared at her in disbelief. As if to prove
her point, she opened her hand and the stake dropped, crashing
lightly through the pine needles below. She cocked an eyebrow as it
to say, “See,” and then moved the last couple of feet up toward
me.

I was now sitting on the far edge of the
branch. If I shifted my weight just a little, I would drop.
Directly onto her. I was dense enough to do real damage, and the
two of us would drop like a rock. I would survive, but I doubted
her human host would.

She took another step, and another.

I wondered if she had another stake
concealed somewhere. What she would do with my blood was anybody’s
guess, but I suspected it had something to do with the stone giant
nearby. After all, I had just felt its power, although limited. And
one thing I knew about demons was this: they were always looking
for a host. A way to escape the confines of hell, where they damn
well belonged.

And a massive stone body, full of unlimited
power, would no doubt fit the bill nicely.

It was now or never, I thought. If I was
going to do this, I needed to do it right away...and then what?
Although a fall through the trees wouldn’t kill me, I wasn’t immune
to broken bones. Yes, I healed quickly, but not in my current
poisoned state, where everything was sluggish, where I felt less
than human.

I waited, debating. Parker took another step
up and positioned herself under me.

She reached up...

Her fingers, I saw, were clawed. Although
her host was human, the demon inside would eventually take over the
body and reveal its true nature.

With one hand holding onto a sagging branch,
she used the other to reach under the hem of my jeans. It could
have been a cold snake working its way up through my pants. Despite
myself, I shivered.

Do it now. Do it.

Except I didn’t do it. I was suddenly unsure
if dropping down was the best answer. Maybe it was the holy water
and garlic in my system that made me doubt myself. And so I watched
and waited, virtually helpless.

“Is this some kinky sex thing?” I asked,
trying to be glib, using the last of my strength to utter those
silly words.

With her hand groping me under the bottom
hem of my pants, she suddenly slashed hard across my ankle, using
her sharp nail to open my skin. A furious burning raged through me
and I winced.

“Now, that wasn’t so bad was it?” she asked,
drawing her hand out. I saw that her index finger dripped blood—my
blood.

She brought her glistening finger to her
mouth, grinned wildly, and then popped it in like a bloody
lollipop.

I waited. She waited.

She gasped and her body contorted wildly.
She kept contorting until she was left sagging on the branch.

The demon, I knew, was gone.

And now the blonde girl, whoever she was,
began a slow slide off the branch. I should have let her drop. No
doubt she had asked the demon to posses her, because demons need an
opening, a weakness, an invitation. Somehow she’d summoned it. No
doubt she deserved whatever was coming next.

But, dammit, if I was going to play hero, I
had to do it all the way. I didn’t let her drop alone.

Too weak to do much else, I slid off the
branch I had been perched on, took hold of the young girl, and
together we crashed down through the tree. I did my best to protect
her, taking the brunt of the breaking limbs, some of which tore
through me.

Luckily, none of the shattered branches
pierced my chest, or I’d have been hanging there like a vampire
shis kabob.

Near the base of the tree, the branches
thinned out and we dropped freely. I turned slightly in mid-air and
made sure she landed on top of me.

Which she did.

Mercifully, the branches, although tearing
through my skin, had slowed the fall. And even more mercifully, we
had landed on a thick pile of moss and ferns. No real harm, perhaps
the first good news I’d had in a few days.

The girl also seemed mostly unharmed.

She was also fully human, and I knew there
was only one way to purge the poison from my system.

I needed a fresh feeding.

And as I lay with the girl in my arms, I
drew just enough blood from her neck to return my strength, but not
enough to cause any real harm to her.

As I stood, leaving her curled within the
moss and ferns, the wound on her neck already healing, I felt
stronger than I had felt in quite some time. The girl would awaken
soon, no doubt confused and weak as hell. But at least she was
alive. Whoever she was.

Now, where had the demoness gone with my
blood?

I had no sooner thought the question when
the earth beneath me shook and a great roar filled the sky. I think
I had my answer.

I dashed through the woods and, at the edge
of the clearing, I pulled up short. On the raised dirt platform,
the stone statue was moving. As it rose from its crouched position,
it threw back its head and let loose with another terrifying
roar.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised to
see the statue moving. After all, I myself had recently inhabited
it. But what did surprise me was that as the statue stepped away,
it revealed what appeared to be a hole. A very deep hole.

So deep that I suspected it went straight to
hell.

After all, pouring free from it were
shadowy, winged figures. Demons.

Dozens of them.

Chapter Twenty-six

In my limited experience, demons tend to
inhabit hosts, usually flawed people who leave themselves
vulnerable to invasion and possession.

And although I had encountered a few lesser
demons in my day, I’d never seen such a horde all at once. And
never had I seen them in their true forms—if indeed that’s what
these badassed winged creatures were.

They swarmed around the statue like
hummingbirds around a sugar jar. They were the size of monkeys,
although they had leathery, bat-like wings and hooked claws.

After a moment, they began swooping from the
air toward the slowest of the fleeing security guards. Screams
ripped the night as several of them were seized and dragged into
the air. The demons were small and had trouble gaining altitude
with the extra weight.

I was still looking around for the demoness,
but I was getting a bad, bad feeling. A feeling that she had
tricked me yet again, and now it was Parker in the statue, getting
ready to party.

Sure enough, the winged demons carried their
human Kibbles n’ Bits straight back to the statue, which hadn’t
moved much. The first demon flung its limp cargo into the statue’s
stone jaws, and the mouth opened with a rumble. Then the jaws
clamped closed, and I heard the distinct crunching of bone amid the
shriek of pain. Blood squirted out like black rain.

The statue grew a little more flexible with
the feeding, and the next few demons circled in a holding pattern
around the statue’s head, no doubt waiting for the next special
delivery.

I didn’t care about Erasmus, who was on his
knees in awe before the giant statue, not realizing he’d been
tricked just like I had.

The security guards were probably in on the
sacrifice, so maybe this one had it coming. But it was probably
just another asshole wanting a paycheck. To watch an innocent
person die was too much to take. Despite all the atrocities I’d
committed in my past, I still knew good from evil. And that stone,
cold-hearted bitch was definitely evil.

She spat out the sodden uniform and a couple
of bones, and the waste spun to the ground around Erasmus. By now
the compound was empty, and a couple of gunshots rang out as other
security guards tried to save themselves from the flying
critters.

I was fully recovered by then, the young
woman’s blood coursing through my system and energizing me. A
vampire buzz is unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my human
life. My senses were heightened and my skin seemed electrified, and
the fluttering of the demon’s wings was like a mighty wind against
me. The trembling of the ground rolled up through my feet and the
moist aroma of the mountain air was rich in my nostrils, as was the
tempting smell of the blood dripping down the demoness’s chin.

In a weird way, I felt fully alive—or at
least in the full mockery of life that only the undead can
feel.

But all I could think about was rescuing the
people that had been snatched by demons. Not all of them were
security guards, as I saw fluttering robes and blonde hair dangling
beneath some of the flying creatures. Apparently the demons had
invaded the grounds and found fresh prey.

Parker had gotten what she wanted from me—a
feeding.

And I’d gotten what I wanted from her—a
feeding in return, from the abandoned host she’d granted me.

I could have called it even and left
Cloudland forever, granting Parker all the power she’d ever craved
and letting her have dominion over her flock of demons and Erasmus
Cole, the man she’d pretended was her father.

But my blood—such as it was—still boiled
from her previous trickery, and the way she’d played the innocent
victim and deceived me into helping her.

And despite not having been human for so
many, many years, and despite the cold spot in my chest where a
heart once raged with passion, I had a burning desire for
revenge.

With no weapons at hand to take down a
twenty-five-foot statue, I figured that instead of bringing the
battle to Parker, I’d have the battle carry me to her.

I burst out of my concealment and ran toward
one of the buildings, flailing my arms like I was one of Erasmus
Cole’s Cloudland disciples. Even though I was no longer wearing a
robe, I figured a winged demon fresh from the bowels of hell pretty
much perceived that one fleeing person was as good as another.

I ducked my head as if I was scared, but in
truth, I didn’t want any of those claws to puncture my neck. I
hadn’t seen any of the demons feed, and they seemed intent on
serving their newfound goddess, but the sight and smell of blood
makes monsters of so many of us.

The only difference was, instead of heading
for the safety of the buildings, I bolted straight toward the dirt
platform.

It took only moments before I heard the
flapping of wings and one swooped down behind me. I braced and then
felt the claws dig into my shoulders, hard enough to get a solid
grip but not tearing through my shirt and piercing the skin.