Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) (23 page)

As all that went through my head, I emptied my clips, reloaded, and resumed fire. The wolf voices
at the Mission
fell
silent.
My gaze slid to the doors of the church where Angie glared at me with utter hatred. Eyes blazing amber, she backed into the church.

T
he
young wolf
voices
in the near distance
fell silent. They’d come
in
now, looking for those that were pack
, those that had called
. When they found the wolves dead, the
new ones would
start killing everything in sight. Those they’d wound would rise as new wolves too, spreading the contagion in a feeding frenzy.
From the
screaming
police sirens, I knew that the carnage
was
spreading.

Only their
Alpha
could stop this.

I yelled over to Old Man, “Hey, we’re going to need him
. Don’t
—”

C-Crack.

Damn. I know the sound of snapping vertebrae when I hear it.

I looked over. Leona was gone, probably ghosting away to heal and reconstitute herself. Old Man held Williams so his feet swung, toes scraping the sidewalk. The
Alpha
’s neck looked broken. His head swung loosely. His eyes were closed, his muscles lax. Old Man
thrust a silver dagger into the wolf’s heart for good measure and
tossed the carcass away, turning to stare into the surrounding darkness.

Lightning flashed, bleaching the world white for several heartbeats.
Darkness crashed back in, and Old Man s
aid
. “They’re coming.”

“The new wolves? Yeah, I already figured that out.”

“No, something else.” His head lifted as if scenting the wind. “I feel a presence in the storm, riding in my sky.”

Leona reformed next to him, looking her usual self. Even William’s blood was gone from her black fur.

There was a shimmer of dark energy. Sarah appeared in a black robe, wearing that god-awful necklace of hers. She snatched
the knife from
William’s torso, pinning his face to her breasts. Tears dampened her face. She looked at me with human eyes filled with hate.

I bolted toward her.

Leona and Old Man swiveled to see what was happening
.

Before any of us could reach them, William and Sarah vanished into thin air. I had the feeling I’d find them inside the mission. I started for the doors where Angie had retreated. “You guys got this?” I asked.

“Sure,” Leona said. “Go have fun.”

I pulled my strai
gh
t katana out of thin air
, still sheathed. The demon
blade begged me to let it out
to feed.

Soon, I promised. Soon.

TWENTY-
THREE

“If you don’t want me to piss in the

holy water, don’t invite me to church.”

—Caine Deathwalker

I
n the mission’s front vestibule, a suspenseful silence held sway. The outside street lamps backlit
the
stained glass windows, spilling primary colors across midnight-red carpeting
and up a wall.
In the glow, I saw a
wood
en
stand
and
a basin of holy water.
Out of the light
fall, both sets of double doors into the nave were open.

There were no smoldering red eyes in the
inner
shadows, but I knew an ambush had been set
, s
o, of course, I had to go in.

Against my usual habit,
I went in on the right, scanning empty pews
that smelled of lemon Pledge
. It wasn’t perfectly dark; the left wall had more stained glass. Shafts of red, blue, and gold knifed across the gloom.
Sheathed k
atana in hand, I glided
past
the closed doors of
confessionals. Alabaster saints
on pedestals
stared
down
at m
e
from
lofty heights, their
expressions troubled.

I had the feeling they didn’t want me here.

As I passed the last confessional, it
s door
splintered
, ripping
off the hinges
with a loud crack
echoing
in the vaulted space.
A wolf in
human form
leaped
at
me
.
Everything slowed in my mind
as I dipped and wheeled out from under
his
fangs and claws. My sheathed katana trailed me, staying in his path.
It
struck
him
midair,
glancing off
his
shoulder
,
breaking his collarbone
as he went by
. He
land
ed
on the carpet, tumbling into the end
piece of a pew. Rebounding, the wolf spun, looking for where I’d gone. Pain and injury weren’t slowing him down. Werewolves heal too quickly for that. I
swung
the sheath a second time and
br
o
k
e
his jaw
.

E
nough playing around
.

As he staggered, I unsheathed my blade. Its voice strengthened, as did the hunger it shared with me.
T
he blade was as much an opponent as the wolves. It would do its best to drain my will, to make me an extension of it, so it could kill forever, creating oceans of blood. This was the price I paid for so powerful a weapon. It was why I’d hesitated to draw it—until I heard the soft padding of wolves rushing me in the shadows.

There were plenty of red-eyed shadows now the trap was sprung, and
Angie
was in the lead, her face fuzzy, distorting as her change beg
a
n.
Without looking at the wolf I’d been fighting, I stabbed him through the heart. The
meteoric
iron of my straight katana couldn’t stop th
e
wolf
without taking off his head, but the demon blade possessed a soul of its own—a vampiric soul. The blade burned with a crimson aura, and I heard the howl of a wolf spirit a
s
it was ripped from the wolf, into the blade.

More,
the sword demanded.
More.

Larger than regular wolves, possessing the full mass of the humans they’d been, four of the werewolves sprang, only Angie digging in and drawing back. She
retained
enough of her human side to understand the damnation my weapon offered.

In the heat of battle, things
continued
to pass with aching slowness. Not that I was slow. My sheath in one hand became a flail. The blade in the other cut
the air, weaving a rune of death. Hitting solidly would have stopped my energy, immobilizing the weapon. I used it to scratch. Being a demon blade, a scratch was enough for it to slurp out the life force of two wolves in a moment. My sheath brained a wolf, making it shake
its
head in annoyance, shoot
ing
past me, missing. My sword took out another wolf with a cut on its spine.

The phantom voices of captured spirits thickened the air,
wrapping around my sword, sinking into the metal.

I
crouched with my blade ne
xt to my left hip
, waiting for the return of the wolf that had
lunged by
. I didn’t look at it directly, but
gaze
d across the pews so peripheral vision could catch both the turn
ing
wolf and anything An
gie might do at the same time.

Sh
e turned tail—literally, fully wolf now—and ran for the front of the church.
T
he
last wolf
charged
.
Claws scraped the air,
barely
missing
me
as
I
danced away
,
slic
ing my blade
across
Achilles tendons
.
The wolf’s spirit howled in despair, drawn into the sword as its body collapsed, in dea
th
.

I stared a
s
the katana grew silent, temporarily sated. That wouldn’t last. The blood on the steel sank into the steel, an after dinner drink.
I sheathed the blade once more.
Dropping it from my hand sent it back to the armory
in
my vault
.

With any luck, Angie was now leading me to Sarah and the Succubus. And Haruka of course. It had nearly escaped my mind that I was supposed to be rescuing her.
Perhaps I get distracted too easily by my passions.

My automatics in hand
,
I stalked toward a door
someone had opened for
Angie.
In her wolf form, she didn’t have hands to work the knob; she’d have busted through. And if the door had been ajar, I’d have spotted light bleeding into the sanctuary from the well
-
lit
hallway.
Half
way there, I heard the sound of shattering glass. I stopped to crouch and swing my guns toward the high
,
stained glass windows. Several of them had caved in, spraying razor-edged shards and broken
lead
fretting into the air. Amid the debris,
Old Man and Leona hung a moment, then dropped as gravity caught up to them.

As a spirit beast, Leona hadn’t needed to break her window. I think she’d just thought it a fun thing to do.

I relaxed, straightening, focusing my senses on the door to the hall once more. Crunching glass underfoot, Old Man ambled up to me, Leona a step or two behind.

“This is as far as you’ve got?” Old Man said.

With the muzzle of the gun in my right hand, I pointed over my shoulder. “I stopped to play with some wolves back there.” I pointed the gun ahead at the open door. “Angie went that way. I was just about to go after her when you crashed the party. Why aren’t you guys outside, dealing with the new wolves?”

“That new force I sensed in the clouds?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Slayers
with glider packs, swords, and automatic weapons
.”

“Quite a lot of them,” Leona said.

“We left the wolves to them
,
”
Old Man said.

I couldn’t believe my ears.
Slayers? In my town?
Slayers were humans with
a hard on for killing whatever goes bump in the night. They’re a secret society all about purifying the planet of preternatural threats. “We shut down their L.A. operation years ago.”

Old Man nodded once. “Guess they’re back in business.”

As if things weren’t complicated enough.

Leona said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky
. They a
nd the wolves
could
wipe each other out.”

Old Man and I looked at her silently.

“It could happen,” she said.

I started for the door. “I don’t have that kind of luck. Come on, let’s go.”

Low to the ground, quite a bit faster on four feet, Leona rushed ahead. “I’ll take point.”

“Okay,” I said, “but be careful. They know we’re coming, and Angie has a good nose.”

“Bitch will find out I’ve got good claws,” Leona said. “I never liked her.”

The hall took us to a kitchen where dishes filled a sink, trash waited to be emptied, and a few bodies cluttered the floor.
A woman lay at my feet, black hair in a bun, eyes glazed by death, vacantly staring, her mouth opened in a silent scream. Her dress was tattered and soaked in blood as was the underlying flesh. A teenage
volunteer,
and a priest in black suit with white collar, were missing essential organs. They’d been attacked by wolves, and
had
not survived the
transition
into new wolves.

So much blood, a pretty contrast to the bloodless flesh, the frozen expressions of horror—
beautiful! Wolves do good work. If only they were tidier about cleaning up…

I went into a dining hall with tables and benches. Cold food aged
o
n paper plates. Paper cups were
overturned
, spilling Kool-Aid to mix with blood. There were more bodies. From the smell, quite a few of the homeless had unloaded in their underwear as death came for them with claw and fang. There were kids
here too. Many of hem had simply been batted across the room into walls, leaving red smears as they slid to the floor an
d
fell over.

For some reason, my gaze snagged on an infant near a
crumpled
blanket on the floor. A rather large bite had removed half her torso. Tiny ribs were exposed. From the angle of her head, her neck looked broken. She had curly blond hair and small hands clenched in fists that had done her no good. Her life wasn’t any
more valuable than anyone else’s had been. I couldn’t understand why my heart felt so dense inside my chest. You’d almost think I cared.

“No wolves here.” Leona paused to lap up some of the pooling blood
.

I felt a cut across my
pectoral muscles
and jumped back
,
looking fo
r
the source of the attack
. It hadn’t
fel
t
like a blade o
r
claw
tip.
M
agic
?
M
y
protective
tat
had
let it happen
.
I knew who
this
had to be.
Sarah.
Another cut opened
,
a rip across my side.
Bitch!
The
wounds
were shallow, teasing.
The one that cut across the dragon tattoo on my chest had already healed since poison wasn’t involved this time.
W
as she hitting from a distance, or in the room, invisible to our senses?
With that necklace of hers, either was possible.

“Old Man,” I yelled. “I need some fog. Fast!”

Not bothering to ask me why, he muttered beneath his breath, throwing out an arcane gesture or two. The air went from dry to damp at warp speed
. C
louds formed around him. Billows expanded to choke the room, making us shadows to one another. Holding my PPKs out in at a forty-five degree angle, I scanned the fog for a human-shaped gap
in
the mists. If
Sarah
was here I’d know it. If she w
as
attacking by some kind of remote viewing, I thought this would mess up her targeting.