Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) (24 page)

Listening, I heard no footsteps trying to avoid me. Sweeping through the cloud, I found no gaps. “I think Sarah
i
s homing in on us with a magic attack,” I said. “Can you keep the cloud cover with us as we move on?”

He snorted. “Please, ask me for something difficult.”

Old Man and Leona were near me, blurry but identifiable from their silhouettes.
“Stay close,” I said. “We want to avoid friendly fire if we can.”

Leona
padded past me,
sniff
ing
the air
. He tail lashed with excitement. “I’ve got Angie’s scent. This way.” She moved on, but not so swiftly that we lost her. Stepping over bodies, we reached another open door. Our fog went ahead, billowing down a flight of stairs into darkness.

“Obvious isn’t it?” I said.

“As soon as someone creaks on a stair,” Old Man said, “all hell’s going to break loose. They’ll have us in
a
bottle neck, all bunched together.”

“Good strategy,” I said.

“Not good enough,” Leona said. “Give
me
a minute.”

She went ghost, not just invisible but intangible too. Dissipated, there was no target to hit, no weight on the stairs, no warning at all for the poor sons of bitches down there waiting
on us.

A few heartbeats later, harsh, bestial screams erupted
from inh
uman throats. There was gunfire, a sound of struggle, of things breaking—including bones—then an ill-omened silence. Leona’s voice reached us, “Haul ass, the coast is clear.”

Old Man and I hurried down. He kept the mist thick around us as we reached the bottom so there was very little to see, except for the wolf bodies we stepped over as we entered a hallway that was lit at the end by
a
single bare bu
lb in the ceiling.

I said, “Sarah’s got to be running out of wolves down here.”

“Doesn’t mean her necklace isn’t an army all by itself,” Old Man said. “Are you sure you can counter it now?”

“I sure hope so.”
I thought of the new dragon and lotus tattoo on my arm.
As a last resort, I’d use it, but I’d try everything else first. Playing around with altered spaces when you weren’t really demon or fey was highly dangerous. Messing with a
micro-universe
belo
nging to a Goddess—even worse.

Leona was halfway down the hall, in plain sight. The clouds were thinning to nothing. We were exposed to anyone who might leap out of a doorway. “What’s the idea, Old Man?” He muttered a curse, shocking me. I’d never heard him curse before. “Sorry,” he said. “It seems like Sarah has found an answer to my weather magic.”

“She
so
needs to die!” I said.

A voice behind me made me spin, taking aim.

“Maybe I can help you with that.”
It was
Kris Salem, the
warlock from Gloria’s bar
.
His off-kilter hair was still a spiky blond embarrassment.
He had
an Uzi hanging on a strap at his side. Developed for urban combat, the machine pistol was good for bouncing bullets off of pavement, spraying under cars, that sort o
f
thing, but not a precision weapon.
It
jammed easily and tended
to
break when dropped. He’d
traded in his midnight blue long coat for
black
Kevlar
b
ody armor and a
harness that held a
sword
on one hip and a western handgun on the other, a desert eagle with pearl handles
.

Old Man looked him over. “The slayers are recruiting warlocks now?”

Salem shrugged. “Murder
brings
odd
people together
. You want my help or not?”

TWENTY-FOUR

“Best rule I ever learned: shoot first,

shoot some more, change clips, ask

questions, shoot again.”

—
Caine Deathwalker

“Okay,” I shot a glance down the hall, making sure hostiles weren’t popping out to gun me down, “truce, for now, but later we’re going to have words about you and your slayer friends being in my territory without observing protocols.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Salem swung his dangling machine pistol up, holding it braced in both hands. “If there is a later.”

“Can we get a move on,” Leona called back to us. “The new moon will be in position soon for fueling dark magic. Do we really want Sarah getting stronger?”

I nodded and moved ahead, slipping one of my PPKs into the right shoulder holster, replacing the gun with the one from my right thigh. The substitute weapon had explosive tips and had hollow cores filled with mercury. Regular ammo just leaves big holes. These rounds were better, guaranteed to tear apart torsos and amputate limbs. They wouldn’t stop the charge of a two ton golem, or a millennial dragon, but just about anything else would go down and stay down.

We waited in the hall, crouching, balanced on the balls of our feet for quick evasion, while Leona pulled ghost recon on each door we
passed. Only after she faded back into view, nodding the all-clear, did we go on. At the last door, we heard chanting, Sarah up to no good.

“Recognize the spell?” I asked Old Man.

He shook his head. “No but I think I caught a reference to elder gods in there.”

The warlock listened intently. He turned dark eyes my way. “A necromantic invocation used to raise the dead.”

“That means zombies.” I growled. “I hate zombies.”

“Me too,” Leona said. “I like my kills fresh, not gamy.”

“Never mind that,” Old Man said. “Leona, ghost inside and create a distraction while we hit the door.”

She faded out while walking through the wall.

The drone of Sarah’s chant seemed to do something to the air, making it glacial heavy. There came a female yelp. The sound of growls and scrambling bodies reached us. I think our leopard might have bitten Angie on the ass. There was a slight pause in the chanting, then it resumed with a brisker pace.

Salem pitched himself through the door, fanning the flaming muzzle of his Uzi around with no attempt to aim at specific targets. I went through right after him, Old Man on my heels. The space was tight for fighting, especially with assorted boxes piled here and there, boxes now stitched with fire from the Uzi. Leona and Angie were tearing into each other, blood and fur flying. The warlock went for the succubus who was still wearing Jessie’s form. Old Man and I charged Sarah who was hemmed in with smoldering braziers to either side. They were filled with red-hot charcoal briquettes, putting tendrils of smoke—like pale dragons—in the air. She clasped her necklace in two hands, standing behind a wooden table where Haruka was tied down, eyes closed, chest rising gently as she stared vacantly in a light trance.

On the floor, stretched parallel to Haruka, lay William’s corpse.

My senses magically enhanced, I was able to keep track of Salem as well as Leona. The warlock dropped an empty clip, reloaded, but then switched over to his desert eagle. I noticed he wore a wristband on his gun hand. The band was platinum, framing a sapphire that pulsed with blue light like a second heart. I wondered if the stone magically increased the accuracy of his shots, or if he just thought it made him look cool. My magic also informed me that all the bad guys were accounted for, with Angie being the last of the wolves.

As I cut toward the right end of the table, Old Man slammed Sarah with a violet-white bolt of lightning. It thinned out as it reached her, briefly making visible the thin, blue shell of a protective barrier. I cut toward the left side of the table, but didn’t quite make it. William’s eyes were open. He’d reached out at werewolf speed, and held my ankles like iron shackles.

Ah, the necromantic spell! Sarah’s brought her Grandfather back from the dead. Doesn’t she know this type of thing always backfires?

I had the gun with explosive rounds lined up on William’s right wrist. The gun with silver ammo locked onto his head. I snapped off two shots. The wrist disintegrated in a froth of blood. The silver round made a neat hole in his forehead, a larger hole in the back of his skull. That should have stopped him. It didn’t. He flipped over and surged to his feet. Resurrected, he possessed his usual werewolf speed, but none of the silver allergy common to those with lycanthropy.

I fell backwards, my left ankle gripped tightly, held up in the air. The wolf shifted forward, jaws cranking open, bearing white fangs. He used the stub of his right wrist, trying to scrape away the legging of my night suit to expose the underlying flesh.

I tried to warm the tat that controlled my
Dragon Flame
, but pain didn’t come, the magic didn’t answer. Sarah was chanting again, the texture of her words indicated a different class of magic being used. She was damping out Old Man’s magic, and mine too.

I placed an exploding round in William’s left wrist, amputating his other hand, while using my free leg to drive a heel into his groin. He bent at the waist, a savage growl vibrating his throat as he drooled. I drove a second kick in, but he twisted his hips, and my kick slid off his thigh. Splattered with his blood, my left leg dropped free. I rolled heel-over-head, gaining distance.

Belatedly, it occurred to me that the zombie had felt pain. Zombies aren’t supposed to feel pain. That meant he was something else. If only my magic-enhanced senses weren’t back to human levels...

The sound of splintering wood pulled my attention to Old Man. Holding a ripped off table leg, he clubbed at Sarah as she retreated. My attention snapped back to William as his head caught another stray round and became a crimson cloud, bone fragments flying everywhere. That had to have been Salem’s Desert Eagle, using large-bore .50 rounds. Packing in twice as much gunpowder makes a bullet fly faster, doing more damage, but sometimes the gun can blow up in your hand, and the stronger recoil can break your wrist if you’re not careful. Another drawback is that you’re slowed down by having to re-aim after every shot.

The reanimation spell Sarah had used lost its grip on William now he was headless. He went limp, dropping to his knees, then to his chest.

“You owe me one,” Salem yelled from across the room.

“In your dreams,” I said. “You know that was just an accident.”

I heard police sirens wailing closer to the mission. Time was running out. I hoped the slayers and new wolves outside would keep the cops off my back until I was done down here. I also hoped my car was all right. Parking it at the edge of a battle zone might have been less than clever. My insurance doesn’t cover werewolves.

The table, missing a leg, still stood between Sarah and me, but not for long. Old Man swung the wooden leg in a blur, a killer storm driving Sarah before him. In a moment, she’d be rounding the head of the table, coming into the open. Not that I was going to wait for that.

I pointed both guns at her.

And went down as Angie and Leona, still locked in furious combat, barreled into the back of my legs. I fell on them and bounced off onto the floor as they rolled on and smashed through a remaining table leg. The table came down on them. They scrambled out from under it and reengaged. Sprawled on the floor, I turned over to get my feet under me. My gaze slid to Haruka, still tied to the table. Her kimono was loose, one nicely formed breast exposed to view. Her head lolled to the side, eyes opened wide.

“Help me!” she cried.

“Working on it,” I said.

Old Man no longer swung his club. He’d stopped moving, peering down at his feet in puzzlement. I saw the problem. The wooden floor had been stimulated with earth magic by Sarah. The boards sprouted roots that writhed up Old Man’s legs, coiling like pythons, pushing out twigs that bristled with tiny oak leaves.

Old Man sighed. “Always something.” He dropped the table leg, using both hands to bend the roots, ripping chunks of them away with demonic strength.

Sarah turned her back on him, running to help the succubus who exuded an air of rampant sexuality that raced my pulse from across the room, but had no effect on the warlock. One-handed, with great relish, he slowly choked the succubus. Her arms hung uselessly at her side. Both looked broken. One had splinters of protruding bone.

She looked ready to sweat blood.

“Sorry,” Salem said, “I’m not into women. Too bad you’re not an incubus.”

She managed to gasp, “Please…”

He said, “You were supposed to wait your turn, and not get in my way. All of us agreed...”

I took a look at her boobs, trying to imagine them from a high, downward angle.
Yeah, they were familiar.
The succubus is the woman from the dream Gray showed me.
That meant that there were more enemies waiting in the wings. Nothing was going to end here. I needed to tell Old Man about this. But for now…

On my feet again, I snapped off a shot, sending an explosive round for Sarah’s head. My shot hit her protective shield, deflected as easily as Old Man’s lightning had been. I figured the short swords strapped to my back would be equally useless. I needed a weapon she couldn’t neutralize, one able to carve through her barrier. I holstered my guns and ran at her, calling my demon blade once more. In its sheath, the katana materialized in my right hand.

Salem took a second to help me out, sending several .50 rounds sizzling in to grind against her shield. The rounds didn’t get through, but Sarah flinched from them.

This let me close the distance, drawing the blade, slashing at the back of her neck. Her shield struggled with my blade. It was like hacking into over-cooked calamari … with a butter knife. I poured my strength into the effort.

The howling of the sword filled my mind as it strained with me, thirsting for blood and another soul. An aura of dark red mist wreathed the demon blade. Obsidian flames danced along the steel, gripping it in places like dragon claws. Once more, the thin shell of Sarah’s barrier shifted into visible light, a haze of electric blue that tinted the sword’s red aura into violet. The barrier began to indent under the sword, deforming as the blade progressed by inches. Its hurricane shriek in
my thoughts gave me a headache.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked. The howl didn’t abate. Long used to pain, I focused through it, my teeth clenched, a growl on my lips.

Sarah faced me now, her necklace in hand, click-clacking into a rounded diamond shape. A haze of red surrounded her. The necklace sprouted black flame as it copied my sword’s aura, fighting hellfire with hellfire.

Old Man appeared at my side, Haruka hanging on his arm. His gaze locked onto the necklace. “Break off! It’s a soul-sink. Your sword’s about to—”

The shield went down and Sarah caught my descending blade with the mechanism on her necklace, risking her fingers. Necklace and katana touched. A blinding flash and deafening boom of thunder erupted. A concussive wave picked me off my feet and threw me backwards. I hit the floor skidding.

And the piercing howl in my head dwindled into an eerie silence
passed. Only after she faded back into view, nodding the all-clear, did we go on. At the last door, we
heard chanting, Sarah up to no good.

“Recognize the spell?” I asked Old Man
.

He shook his head. “No but I think I caught a reference to elder gods in there.”

The warlock listened intently. He turned dark eyes my way. “A necromantic invocation used to raise the dead.”

“That means zombies.” I growled. “I hate zombies.”

“Me too,” Leona said. “I like my kills fresh, not gamy.”

“Never mind that,” Old Man said. “Leona, ghost inside and create a distraction while we hit the door.”

She faded out while walking through the wall.

The drone of Sarah’s chant seemed to do something to the air, making it glacial heavy. There came a female yelp. The sound of growls and scrambling bodies reached us. I think our leopard might have bitten Angie on the ass. There was a slight pause in the chanting, then it resumed with a brisker pace.

Salem pitched himself through the door, fanning the flaming muzzle of his Uzi around with no attempt to aim at specific targets. I went through right after him, Old Man on my heels. The space was tight for fighting, especially with assorted boxes piled here and there, boxes now stitched with fire from the Uzi. Leona and Angie were tearing into each other, blood and fur flying. The warlock went for the succubus who was still wearing Jessie’s form. Old Man and I charged Sarah who was hemmed in with smoldering braziers to either side. They were filled with red-hot charcoal briquettes, putting tendrils of smoke—like pale dragons—in the air. She clasped her necklace in two hands, standing behind a wooden table where Haruka was tied down, eyes closed, chest rising gently as she stared vacantly in a light trance.