Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (8 page)

“Which means they would have stolen her research.”

“There was no break in at the house, though,” Chris said.

“I don’t think she was keeping it there,” I muttered.

Chris and Brad looked at me sceptically. “What makes you so sure?” Chris asked.

“I’m not. Just a hunch.” I looked to Erin. “The cops have followed any paper trails?”

She nodded. “Nothing. She wasn’t renting anywhere, hadn’t bought anything that might house her research. It was a blank.”

“Receipts for the money from the trust fund?”

“She withdrew it in hundred thousand lots. The receipts they have don’t add up to the whole amount. It’s about three million short.”

I let out a long breath. “Okay, final avenue of questioning. The murderer’s escape from the lab where she was killed.”

Ivan shot to the edge of his seat. “This is what made me think of you, Matt. It just seemed so impossible.”

“Everything’s impossible until it isn’t. Will I be able to get into the lab?”

Erin nodded. “I should be able to set it up with
Courey. You’ll have to deal with me, though. He won’t let you go in on your own.”

“Fine. It’ll have to be a night time visit,” I reminded her.

Lips pursed, she didn’t look at Mercy and nodded.

“Why night time?” Brad asked.

“I have another job at the moment. I’ll be pretty busy with it tomorrow. After that, I should be free to work full time on your case.”

Things wrapped up pretty quick. Chris and Brad thanked me all over again and Ivan explained the concept of fake flowers to Mercy. Don’t ask me how they got onto the topic, but it was weird enough for me to usher her out the door ASAP.

Erin came out with us and even got into the same elevator.

“I’m sorry for jumping down your throat earlier,” she said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure I deserved it.”

Mercy gave me a like-there’s-any-doubt look.

Erin stared at her, then at me. “I’m here to help them, not you. Just so we’re clear.”

“As crystal.”

A couple of floors went by in tense silence, then she muttered, “Thank you for helping Ivan and Brad.”

Another couple floors, then I said, “I’m still a bit surprised he came to me over you.”

Man, she looked haggard. There were deep hollows under her eyes, she seemed to have lost weight and her auburn hair was dull and straight.

“I’m his friend,” she said. “I understand why he didn’t come to me. If something turns up that reflects badly on Chris or Brad, then at least I won’t have the chore of telling him.”

Made sense. I should have thought it through before shooting my mouth off in her office.

“What’s the other job you have?” Erin asked.

“Ghost,” Mercy said. “Poltergeist.”

Well, she seemed to be over her jealousy. For how long, I didn’t know. Being in the confined space with Erin was working against my cool. I could taste her aura—sweet melon and heady
Moscato mixed with dark chocolate and bitter coffee beans. Though it was extra heavy on the sharp chocolate this time. Wonder what that meant.

“Interesting,” Erin said.

Even though her tone was flat, there was a spark of interest in her. I hid a smile. She didn’t deny ‘my world’ as much as she wanted to.

I felt it a split second before Mercy tensed. A sensation that was completely unknown but at the same time, rooted somewhere deep inside Mercy like a long forgotten instinct suddenly awoken. It blazed up blindingly bright, wiping away every pretence at civilization Mercy had learned. Like a freight train it hit me through the link and that primal, savage part of my psyche I tried so hard to bury answered the challenge with a painful, needful roar.

For a good part of my life, a berserker rage had been my greatest enemy. An anger so intense it emptied my head of anything but the desire to inflict pain. It had seen me in prison for a year and it had seen me nearly returned there several times.

The darkness behind my tightly shut eyes tinged red in an instant. I could hear Mercy snarling, felt it like an accompanying rhythm to the beat of my berserker madness.

Erin.

A distant, screaming part of my barely functioning brain threw the name at me.

A flood of images and emotions rode the wave of unthinking violence. Erin staring me down, like a predator, a competitor, a challenger; Erin, scared and angry, pointing a gun at me, screaming at me to get away; Erin, bruised and beaten, telling me to leave her behind, to survive.

Her taste was all over me, sweet and dark and dangerous, trapped in the small, tight confines of the elevator.

A light snapped on in the darkness. I could see her, in shades of silver and red, reflected a thousand times over, pushed back into the corner of the elevator, shoulders shuddering against the slick, polished metal surface. Her gun was in both hands, shifting back and forth between me and Mercy, uncertain of who the greater threat was.

She was tired and weary, easy prey. A flick of my wrist and her gun wouldn’t be a problem. A silent command to Mercy and I wouldn’t have to worry about the gun at all.

But she wasn’t the reason. No, there was something else, something bigger.

That realisation cleared my head faster than anything else could have. The red haze dropped away and the too white light of the elevator bit into my eyes.

“Merce,” I snapped as I shielded my eyes. “Quit it. Stand down.”

Mercy growled and fought my command. The wild, vampire impulse to hunt and kill that was usually buried as deep as my berserker tendencies wasn’t as willing to be put aside. She only ever got this bad when she was hungry and I knew that wasn’t the case this time. This wasn’t internal. It was about as external as it could get.

Something was here. Something that pushed all of Mercy’s buttons like a naughty child let loose in a button factory. Something vaguely… familiar.

“Matt?” Erin was cautious, still holding her gun ready, but pointing it more at Mercy than at me.

“I’m fine,” I said, not taking my gaze off Mercy. “Mercy. De-vamp. Now!” Old habits die about as hard as some movie franchises and despite Mercy’s progress, I still carried a pen-needle of tranquiliser. My hand began to reach for it in the pocket of my jeans.

Mercy saw it. Red lips peeled back from glistening white fangs. She vibrated with the battle to both resist and obey me. The dark thing inside me tried to break free again, moving in unsettling, sharp ways.

I was losing.

I hadn’t lost a battle of wills with Mercy in a long time.

Ding.

We’d hit ground floor.

I lost the battle and Mercy just lost it.

The doors pulled back and Mercy, a blurred, snarling whirlwind, tore out of the elevator and arrowed for the angel waiting in the foyer.

Wait. Angel?

Well, I mean, it sure looked like an angel. Tall, golden skinned, feathery wing span close on twelve feet wide. And it was certainly my idea of an angel—very Amazonian and wearing little more than a scrap of material around her waist.

“What the hell?” Erin muttered as vampire and angel clashed.

The doors swished shut.

“Shit.” I stabbed the door-open button while pulling my gun. Had no idea if it would be effective, but I was otherwise packing for vampire, and this was no vampire.

Erin stabbed the door-closed button. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” I jabbed a finger onto the door-open button and kept it there.

In retaliation, Erin punched as many of the floor buttons as she could. “What do you mean you don’t know? I thought you were an expert on this sort of stuff.”

The poor elevator was as confused as I was. Its doors groaned in indecision. Beyond them, I could hear the furious battle taking place between vampire and… whatever it was. Maybe Erin had a point. I should probably know these things, right? Especially if it could take Mercy’s higher functions—and therefore mine—off line so quickly and thoroughly.

I settled for muttering, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…” and ran up against a possibility I wouldn’t have considered otherwise.

“Not a great excuse, Hawkins,” Erin snapped, checking the mag of her
Glock.

“Not an excuse,” I said.

“Then what—”

“
Shh.” I closed my eyes to block out Erin’s affronted glare.

Heaven. Or perhaps... Hell. The thing in the foyer, the angelic looking thing, was responsible for Mercy’s flip-out and it had felt familiar, like a distilled, concentrated sensation I’d been aware of for a while now. Imps. Their small influence on my psychic senses hadn’t bothered me, or Mercy, before. This was no imp, but I was willing to bet it was the same family—demon.

Opening my eyes, I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going to open the doors and when I do, you stay in here. Hopefully it’ll be safer.”

“And you?”

“I have to help Mercy.” I drew my Barretta Cougar and put a hand on the perhaps permanently closed doors.

My fine control of my psychic abilities was getting better. Pity this didn’t call for fine control. I reached out with the ephemeral hand of my psyche and pushed it between the doors. Pouring as much strength as I could into it, I shoved outward.

With an agonised squeal, the elevator doors opened. The moment I took my concentration away from it, the doors would close again, so I dived through as soon as it was wide enough. As I rolled and came to my feet, I saw Erin dart out between the rapidly narrowing doorway.

“I said,” I began, but cut myself off as Erin—looking beyond me—suddenly dived to one side.

Taking it on faith, I dived in the other direction. Something big and blue and suspiciously electrical looking smashed into the doors of the elevator. The thick metal doors buckled and smoked, burnt black in a neat circle right where I had been standing.

Erin and I stared at it for perhaps a second, then scarpered for cover. I skidded in behind a plush couch, or at least, the remains of a plush couch. From memory, it had been a nice,
burnt orange colour when I’d passed it on my way up to Ivan and Brad’s. Now, it was just burnt. Erin rolled behind the unmanned concierge desk. She was soon joined by Mercy, tossed there by the distressingly unharmed looking angel—eh, demon.

The damage done in the few minutes it had taken me and Erin to argue was impressive. Not one piece of furniture was unscathed, not one potted plant would survive—a few in fact made very lovely burning torches—and one of the floor to ceiling glass panels along the front wall was shattered. Amidst the ruins was the demon; golden, glorious and worthy of all sorts of religious experiences.

Maybe I’d got it wrong. Maybe she was an angel.

Erin popped up from behind the concierge desk and unloaded a nine-mil at the demon.

It hit in a spray of dark fluid, staggering the demon back a single step. Viciously fast, the demon caught her balance and flung a hand out. A bolt of blue light shot back at Erin. Throwing herself to the side let the bolt hit the wall and burn right through it.

Holy freaking cow.

Calm as you please, the demon lowered her hand and turned to face me. “Night Caller,” she said, her voice resonating with choral echoes.

I looked around for someone else to blame, came up empty and so, on a whim, I stood and said, “Yeah? Who’s asking?”

She tilted her fine face. “You hardly seem dangerous. Your female things have proven feistier.”

To illustrate, Mercy rocketed back over the desk and straight for the demon. Moving like mercury, the demon sidestepped the charge and, wings snapping close to her back, followed with a roundhouse kick aimed to take Mercy’s head from her shoulders. If Mercy had been where she was supposed to be, that is.

Mercy, perhaps a nano-second slower than the demon, flipped out of reach, then tumbled back in under the creature’s guard. She kicked at a knee with both booted feet and bones snapped. The demon crashed down.

Mercy took full advantage of the situation. She flowed to her feet, put a foot on the demon’s belly, grabbed her unbroken leg and twisted hard and sharply. Cracking bones grated against each other, making my teeth ache. The demon lifted a hand, blue glow growing.

“Merce!”

The vampire spun into moonlight and vanished. Blue light seared through the space Mercy had just vacated, hit the roof and dropped a light fixture onto the demon. With a negligent motion, the light was tossed aside. The massive wings heaved and pounded against the floor. Then they lifted the demon up into the air, broken legs dangling uselessly. The beat of the wings created a gale force wind that knocked me to the ground. Trapped inside the relatively small—compared to that wing span, at least—space, the wind whipped back on her. She wouldn’t be able to hover in here long.

The demon screamed. A high pitched, sharp sound that shattered the remaining glass front of the foyer. With a big beat of her wings, she moved out into the open night. I scrambled to my feet and raced out after her, Cougar held ready. Erin’s shot had hurt it. I had every hope mine would kill it.

She rocketed upward faster than I could follow and vanished into the dark sky.

Mercy materialised beside me. “It’s not gone.” Her maniacal rage was still there, partly relieved by the fight, enough at least to let some thoughts gather coherently in her head.

“I figured.”

She ground her teeth together. “Smelled like imp. Only worse.” Her control was slipping again, tugging at me through the link.

“Demon.” It was all the confirmation I needed. Mercy’s senses were more acute than mine.

She growled.

Erin came out, dusting fine glass shards off her clothes. Eyeing Mercy warily, she asked me, “Any ideas what it was?”

“We’re working on the hypothesis that it’s a demon.” I pulled out a suppressor and screwed it onto the Cougar. After raising an unholy ruckus by shooting round after endless round into the werewolf-dog, I’d invested in a suppressor. Not quite the best thing ever, but a damn fine invention.

Erin stared me. “A demon?”

“You sound shocked.”

“Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be. But it looked… well, angelic.”

“My thought exactly.” I gave up scanning the sky. If I saw it coming, it would be too late. “Mercy.”

She didn’t need the encouragement. Unleashing her inner predator, eyes gilded in burnished silver, she swirled away.

Erin shivered. “What happened in the elevator?”

I swallowed at the thought of how close I’d come to hurting Erin, or letting Mercy hurt her—which amounted to the same thing. “I think it was the demon. It provoked Mercy into a killing rage.”

“And you.”

“And me,” I admitted tightly. “Where’s your car?”

“That way.” She pointed in the opposite direction to which I’d parked.

“I’ll walk you to your car. The demon’s still around. You should get away while you can.”

Planting her feet, Erin produced her own suppressor. “You’re not shoving me off like that.”

I nearly forgot the rampaging demon somewhere above us. “I thought you didn’t want to be a part of my world. And this thing’s clearly coming for me.”

She stared back with grim determination. “It shot at me.”

“Oh. Well, okay then.”

She trotted along with me to my car. I pulled out my phone and opened the GPS program. It had been modified to track a tracer I’d put under Mercy’s skin. The dot signifying Mercy flashed about the screen, then narrowed down into a straight line.

I grabbed Erin’s arm and simply let myself fall. A great bellow of wind helped us on the way down. We hit the footpath and the demon swept over us, clearing about three feet. Sheesh. Mercy was right behind it. She sailed in on a streak of silver light and planted both feet into its belly. They crashed together and rolled into the brick wall of the building. Dust and mortar rained down and the bricks groaned.

Flipping to into a crouch, I aimed the Cougar and Mercy, surfing on my mental wave, flung herself out of the way. The gun barked softly and the demon jerked with the impact.

After a couple of shots, the demon slumped against the wall, broken legs skewed, body oozing some black substance I was going to call blood. Her wings twitched but that was all. Head tilted to one side, once blazing eyes dull, jaw slack, chest unmoving. Dead.

Right?

Mercy wasn’t convinced. She charged in, irrational, and was met with an abruptly raised arm. Bones cracked in Mercy’s chest as she crumpled over the demon’s arm. With a contemptuous flick, Mercy was thrown aside.

Echoes of Mercy’s pain spearing my chest, I shot the demon again and again. Erin joined me. Eyes alight with blue fire once more, the demon grinned at us and held her hands out to our weapons.

The gun shifted in my hand. Erin gasped and suddenly, our guns were pulled from our grips and flew into the demon’s. She sat up, not at all weakened by the slugs already in her. A cruel smile curled her lips.

“So easy.”

And she fired both guns.

Silver flashed before my eyes and Mercy dropped out of the mist. Her t-shirt was splashed with blood in two places. Two bullets wouldn’t keep her down and she stood up into the next barrage. I threw myself over Erin anyway and we huddled behind the vampire.

The demon kept firing into Mercy. I cringed with each impact. I could feel them through the link, though what I sensed was nowhere near what Mercy suffered. And while Mercy was tough, much more of this and she’d be out for the count.

The tension, the fear, the growing anger that this thing was trying to kill me, trying to kill Mercy, worked against my hard won control. The dark stirred and blossomed as a red sheen over my sight. It roared through my blood and emerged from my throat as a low, rumbling growl. Under me, Erin shook.

Sur
e, the berserker rage had got me into trouble many times, but it had also saved my life more than once. Didn’t mean I could let it out uncontrolled, however.

Unlike in the elevator, I was sort of prepared for the effect of the demon on Mercy and hence me. Thanks to my practice with the finer points of my psychic-coolness, I had learned to channel energy into them.

I balled up all the rage and fear and red hot need to hurt something and shoved it deep into my chest. It consumed the well of energy already sitting there and I was suffused with a powerful tremble.

Before it could explode out of me and flatten Erin, I lifted myself off her and faced the demon. A quick snap down the internal line and Mercy dropped to the ground. I slammed the power forward and it smashed into the demon, collecting the fired bullets on the way. It pulverised the bullets and hit the demon like a battering ram, shoving her into the wall. And I mean into the wall. It was like she melted into it.

She screamed that bone weakening sound again and I pushed her head back into the bricks. Shut her up for good. All that stuck out was her legs and the outer half of each wing, which twitched and then stilled.

Talk about a head rush. The world around me went hazy and spun in all directions all at once. I crashed down. Erin caught me. At least, she softened the impact and swore about it.

Weakened, Mercy’s driving need to kill ebbed. She hauled herself up and crawled over, careful not to drip her toxic blood onto us.

“Jesus,” Erin said and I wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a prayer.

I said something. No idea what, and apparently no one else did either. They looked at me strangely.

“It’s doing something,” Erin warned.

I tried to struggle up and settled for rolling over so I could see. The bits of the demon still showing faded, then vanished. All that was left was a dint in the wall. The last of Mercy’s rage vanished along with the demon.

We looked at the empty space, at each other, then back at the wall.