Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) (29 page)

Yeah, this is a place where a vampire would live.

Gloria pointed at the couch
,
for me to s
i
t
,
and headed for the mini bar in the corner
. She made me a gin and pineapple
drink as I to
o
k my seat
, relaxing.
She smile
d
that sweet smile of hers
.
“What do you need help with
,
sweetie?”

“I need you to use your blood magic to track a dhampyr
,
” said.

“Why are you wasting your time with one of
those
.”

“
Business.
The bitch will lead me to someone that needs killing.
”

“Well,
I
’ll
need some of her blood to do that
.
”

“
How about some of mine instead?
She
bit me
,
so my blood is in her
.
”

“Ye
s
,
that w
ill
work
.
”
Gloria
brought me my
drink
, and set it down on a coffee table.

By then, I’d unzipped the apocalypse suit down to my waist and slipped my left arm out of its sleeve.
I pulled out a
pocket
knife and
put
the edge on my forearm.
“How much do you need?”
Gloria
’s hand enveloped mine, straightening out my left arm
. “Put away the knife. I’ll extract
the
sample,
my way
.”

She smiled, flashing fangs.
Her eyes turned blood red
. S
he ran soft fingers along the
radial artery in my left arm. Her
smile
lacked threat, friendly,
not
even
sexual
.
That was a line neither of us seriously wanted to cross. The friendship would have suffered, and she was too good a resource, one I depended on.

S
he
lifted my hand, bringing the wrist to her lips.

M
y phone
went off.
I
said, “Yeah?”

O
ld Man yelled, “
P
ut her on, now
!
”

I handed her my phone
.

S
he
paused and took
the phone with a question
in the
lift
of her eyebrows. S
he put the phone to her ear
.

I couldn
’
t hear what Old Man was saying
,
but he was talking
—
fast.
After a moment, Gloria’s eyes widened. She shot me a look of disbelief, as if Old Man were telling her I loved mankind and abhorred violence. She looked away and continued to listen, nodding now and again. She said, “And you never told him?”

What the hell?

She nodded absently.
“Sure, I can see that. Okay, mum’s the word.” She turned off the phone and handed it back to me.

I took the phone with my free hand, and put it away. “What’s that all about?”

She smiled with true regret. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to talk to Lauphram. Meanwhile…”

She bit into my arm with relish, her eyes rolling to the back of her head like my blood was the finest vintage ever discovered.
Her breathing stopped as she lost focus on passing for human.
After a while, I actually had to
put a foot against her stomach to
pu
sh
her away
.
“Gloria! What the hell
!
”

Drifting back to me, she licked her lips, as the
red fog cleared from
her
stare. She rea
c
hed
down
and caressed my face in apology. “Sorry, that was
…
rude.”
Her fingertips glided past the bite mark on my arm and the punctures closed—by magic.

“Never mind that,
” I said,
“
did you get what we need?”

“I think so. Just a minute.”
She whirled away, her sheer nightgown belling around her legs as she crossed the room to an antique roll top desk. Lifting the cover, Gloria reached in and gathered several items that she brought back with her.

I picked my drink off the coffee table and guzzled. By the time I finished the sweetly sharp pineapple gin, she had a city map spread on the coffee table and was kneeling by it, her ankles daintily crossed behind her. She lit a small red candle. From the cloying iron scent, I’d say there was blood mixed into the wax. A pendant dangled from her right hand
, a silver chain with a claw gripping a long narrow sliver of clear crystal. She rubbed the crystal across her mouth, tinting it with my blood.

The stone was
now
a
pale shimmer of red
. She moved the pendant until it cast a spangle of pink light on the map. After that, she held her hand perfectly still
. W
ithout the waver of fatigue a human would have felt
, her
arm might as well have been chiseled from marble.

As s
he looked up at me
, her
smile turn
ed
predatory
;
she
’d
started the hunt.

Her lips shaped words that twisted unexpectedly. Her tone was sultry and dark, almost sibilant at times. Her hand never shifted position, but the pink tangle of light slid across the map and stopped.

I bent forward and made a mental note of the
street corner. That would do. My
D
ragon
S
ight
tat would fine-tune the location once I got there. I stood and slipped my arm back into its sleeve, zipping up the suit.

Gloria blew out the candle and licked the bloody crystal clean. She dropped it on the map and almost seemed to levitate back to her feet. She came around the table to stare into my eyes. My shield stayed dormant. She wasn’t trying to roll my mind. She brushed her hand down the line of my zipper, nearly to my crotch, stopping just short.
She murmured, “You will be careful, right?”

“Sure, you know me.”

Her eyes were dilated. There was a slight drunken slur to her woods, “Yes, that’s why I worry.” She was buzzed on my blood. Old Man and I were going to have a serious talk when this mess was over. He was keeping secrets from me, and some of them were mine.

I smiled and kissed her cheek. “Gotta go kill someone. Catch you later.”

Her hand withdrew. She went ahead to open the locks for me. Me and my hard-on
somehow made
it
through the doors to where the night waited like a beast
,
ready
to pounce.

TWENTY-NINE

“
War is
nature
’s way of
prevent
ing

the
stupid
from breeding.
”

—
Caine Deathwalker

I hurried from the
bar
, flicking a glance at the black vans. A twinge in my right leg warned me that an hour had passed and that I was about to pay for the last time I used
V
ampire
S
peed
. I hurried. I didn’t want to lose it here, and display my weakness.

Makes it harder to be a bad ass in people’s eyes.

I made it inside the mustang and slammed my door the same moment pain slammed the breath from my lungs. Cramps knotted all along my legs. I clenched my teeth and bit off a curse
, coming off the seat to straighten my legs
.
I smashed my fist into the roof a half dozen times. As the pain edged down to barely tolerable, I sat and
white knuckled the steering wheel
, an
unvoiced
growl in my
throat
.
I managed to deactivate the security system with sweat running into my eyes.

I had no time for this so I tried
a martial
arts
visualization, imagining myself as a glass figurine. The pain was light ghosting harmlessly through me. I did my best to believe.

Remember to ride the pain, to be the pain, pain doesn’t hurt itself.

Someone
tapped at my car window.

My meditation dissolved. Fresh agony knifed through me.
I drew
a deep
,
staggered breath,
and
pried a hand off the steering wheel
to
power the
electric
window
down
.

One of the Japanese leaned down
and
peer
ed
at me. “Do we not have some place to go?”
he wondered.

“We’ll go when I’m ready.”
He flinched back from the death in my eyes
, and ran back to his van. By then, the pain was slacking. I sent the mustang hurtling out into the streets
. T
he vans stayed well back as if the vehicles were uncertain of my temper. The streets passed in a blur of light and darkness
.
S
kyscrapers looming on every side,
as
cars weav
ed
ahead and behind, and in the other lane. As late as it was, there were a lot of people that didn’t want to go home yet.

I remembered Haruka—dead, frozen, waiting for me—I couldn’t go home yet either, even though I was dragging, fighting the echoes of pain, and the squeezing fist of fatigue. Old Man’s hand emerged from the mirror on my chest. He held a shot of something bubbly and crystal pink. I took the glass and drank. Fire pulsed in my veins. Tiredness retreated to a safe distance. My thoughts sharpened.

I gave the empty glass back to the hand.
Both
withdrew.

“Thanks,” I said,
“
for w
hatever that was.”

Eventually, we reached the right address and piled out of our vehicles.
I looked up. We were in
the
downtown
area where eight of the tallest buildings in California were located. The building we wanted didn’t quite measure up to four hundred feet, but its sleek, new millennium design was impressive. Edison Tower was a behemoth
of
blue
glass, steel, and
white
concrete
at the base
.
Due to city codes, the top would be flat, and have a helicopter pad.

The windows
in the face
were dark, as if the building was drowsing. I knew this wasn’t true. I
fe
l
t
magic
alive in
the structure
,
like the pulsing of blood. A
scent of malice sizzl
ed
the air
.
A
death
trap. No two ways about it.
He knows we’re coming.

I could have had Old Man open a demon gate for us all to pop inside, but the warlock would be shielding himself from detection
, and if
we did hit his location by blind chance, he’d see us coming through the glowing gate and blast us—
Like shooting fireflies in a mason jar.
Going in on foot would
be
slower, but not more dangerous. At least, I hoped not.

Hiro’s m
e
n
stood
a few feet from me. A few were missing, those the slayers had wounded
, a
nd
there were
some reinforcements as well
,
twenty of us now
, including the two scouts
I’d sent around the
structure to reconnoiter. The
y
returned, slinking along like cat-shadows in their black body-stockings, gloves and masks. A bit theatrical, but who was I to talk? I w
ore
a zombie apocalypse combat suit
with a fully stocked weapons harness.

The returning men bowed shallowly.
One of them said,
“No break in.
M
otorcycle in alley.”

The other br
oke in
with very good English
, “It has a vanity plate; SLAYRIDE.
And there’s
a shadow climbing the side of the building
.
”

“Yeah, sounds like Vivian
’
s here al
right.
”
She
was
heading for the roof, p
robably think
ing
it
would
be
easier
to
break in from there. I like
d
a more direct approach.
I walked up to
one of
the
glass
doors and
braced myself to kick.

One of the
Japanese
held up a hand. “Wait, the alarm!”

“There will be no alarm
,” I said. “
Salem wants us all to himself.”

I
kicked
the door
in
. Shards sprayed inward across green and white checkerboard tiles.
I kicked
a few times to clear the jagged gl
ass still in the door’s frame, and
waved
the guys through
.
They
ran pas
t
me
, ducking under a horizontal
crossbar
on the door
frame
to get in
side
the lobby. They
each kept
a gun in
hand.
I headed to
a hall,
about
to turn left in search of the
stairwell
entrance
at the far side of the building. M
ost of the men
were with me, but
four
lingered
at
the elevator
.

I
call
ed back
.
“If I w
ere
you
,
I wouldn
’
t do that
.
”

The
four men
ignored me
as the elevators dinged open. They
stepped inside
. T
he door closed and we heard the sound of metal
tearing,
crumpl
ing itself up like a paper wad. The screams were cut off sharply. One of the men next to me started to say something. I held up a hand to silence him. “Wait for it,” I said.

The doors opened and the elevator car, considerably smaller now, was spit out
with a hell of a racket
, its broken ca
bles dragg
ing
along like dead snakes.

“
Told you
so
,
” I said.
Just started, and down to fifteen already.

The rest of the m
e
n
stared in horror. A few were shaking.

One sobbed. Another screamed and ran for the front door. An older gentleman at my side shot the deserter in the back. Several men
—
that looked like they
’d
had the same idea
—
swallowed and got a hold
of themselves.

I looked at the shooter. “What’s your name?”

He bowed reflexively
. “
Maki,
Osamu
,
Deathwalker-san
.”

Maki was his family name. His given name was Osamu.
He’d impressed me.
I actually wouldn’t mind if this guy survived. “Can I call you
Osamu?”

He blinked and bowed deeper. “
Hai!
”

“Call me Caine,” I said. “You’ve earned the right.”

He straightened, pride shining in his eyes.

“Let’s go.” I
led us down the hall, keeping an eye out for another t
r
ap. We reached the
stairwell door and went through.
The thing ou
gh
t to have been locked, but the warlock wanted us coming after him, especially me. This was
round three in the pissing contest we’d started back at Gloria’s bar.

Most of t
he
men
crowd
i
ed
into
the
stairwell
,
and
star
ed
a
bout
suspiciously
.
The rest called
in
from the
hall
, demanding to know what was going on.

T
he stairw
ell
distorted
as if seen through a
warped
lens. T
he
rising
stairs
bent
into bizarre tangents that shifted as we watched.
The brick walls swelled and contracted as if breathing.
I put my palm against the closest wall. It felt warm, tingly with magic. I warmed the tat for my
Dragon Sight
, and felt as if a drill were ventilating my skull. After a moment, the pain
dropp
ed
.
I studied the area once more.
The stairwell
lingered like a superimposed image
. We were
also
inside the gaping maw of a monstrous serpent, looking down its throat. Space
was bending
in such a way as to turn us into snake food.

I whispered. “Back up, fast.”

They didn’t have my sight, but they saw the gun I swung their way. Those around me spun and shoved back into the lobby. I
di
dn’t
have
time to wait,
and I doubted my usual weapons or tats were up to
this
. If I knew for sure I was about to die, I’d use my Kiss-My-Ass-Goodbye spell which would basically nuke
half the city.

Yeah,
I
’m
a vindictive son of a bitch.

The boys were wedged in the lobby door, and the roof of the
snake’s mouth was descending. I could make out fangs coming together to either side of the door. The
floor
under my feet shifted, rippling, becoming a red tongue. The dimensional reality of the monster snake had yet to completely
gel
. There was still a chance to force the realities back apart.