The Dark Storm (2 page)

A tendril of darkness latched onto De Mona’s ankle, spilling her to the ground. The more she fought, the tighter the darkness wound itself around her legs. The darkness encircled her waist and continued upward, but when it reached the parcel she clutched to her chest it recoiled as if in pain. Using all her strength, De Mona was able to kick free of her shadowy band and scramble clumsily to her feet. The darkness made a second attempt, but De Mona was already across the street. When she reached the corner she took a minute to look over her shoulder, which proved to be a bad move. The darkness itself opened up, spilling three men out. The one bringing up the rear was the shooter. His face and uniform were splotched with blood, but he didn’t seem to notice as he tried to draw a bead on her with his service revolver. She was too quick for him to catch her in a flat-out footrace, but the two leading the charge were closing the distance at an alarming rate.
They looked like dime-store versions of Siegfried & Roy, but the patches of rotted flesh on their faces revealed the truth of what they were: Stalkers.

De Mona willed every ounce of her strength to her legs and got out ahead of her pursuers. She had them by about a half block and was gaining distance, but eventually she would tire and they wouldn’t and then it would be on unless she came up with a plan. As if in answer to her prayers, she spotted an alley a few yards down. Increasing her speed, she grabbed a streetlight, doing a 180, and propelled herself into the alley. When she crossed the threshold of cool darkness she realized it had been a mistake.

The streetlight on the curb still shone, but its beam stopped in a perfect line at the mouth of the alley. It was as if something had come through and swallowed the light. It was a setup and she ran right into it.

“Don’t look so grim, child,” the darkness directly in front of her spoke. From it stepped a man dressed in faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Along his arms De Mona could see tattoos that she knew to be symbols of dark magic. Though his face was pleasant, the unnatural shine to his eyes said trouble. “Give it to me, and I’ll keep you as my whore instead of letting Titus have his way with you.”

“Stay the hell away from me,” De Mona growled, backing up slowly the way she had come. She thought about bolting, but that thought died when the three men who had been on her heels blocked the mouth of the alley. She was caught between the frying pan and the fire.

“You know what I’ve come for.” His eyes flicked and the darkness seemed to fill the whites. De Mona felt the hairs on her skin begin to stand up and knew she had her hands full with that one.

Where demons were hell’s minions, the Stalkers were
the foot soldiers. They were lesser demons and poltergeists that could inhabit the bodies of the dead, provided that they had been murdered or died tragically. Though the Stalkers often maintained their supernatural strength, their full power couldn’t cross the void. They amounted to little more than half-witted slaves, serving Belthon for the promise of chaos.

The more powerful demons were another case. Because their powers were stronger they were able to not only bring more of their full powers across but also to take living hosts. There had been more than one story of a demon making promises to the weak or sickly, neglecting to mention that the host’s soul would have to take the demon’s place in hell until the body was returned or destroyed. The man in the black T-shirt appeared to be such a case.

“There is no escape,” he said to her, smiling to reveal jagged fangs and blackened gums. “Alive or dead, you will give it up.”

De Mona tried to control her fear but found it difficult. Already her fingers were involuntarily curling into hardened spears. Her control was slipping and she couldn’t afford that. Her mission was too important to compromise, but they were leaving her little choice. Slowly she drew her hunting knife from the pocket of her fatigue pants. Looking from the man in the black T-shirt to the Stalkers, she whispered, “Let’s do this.”

Following her challenge De Mona heard two very disturbing sounds. The first was a battle cry as a Stalker charged her and the second was a gunshot from a police officer. The Stalker was quick, but so was she. Dropping the sack to the ground, she caught the Stalker by the throat with one hand and let him taste her blade with the other. She had already stabbed him three times before he realized he was getting the short end. She delivered a backhand
that snapped the Stalker’s neck back, exposing the soft flesh, which she slashed open with her blade. Without missing a beat she drove the knife into his head and kicked the body away from her.

The second Stalker was on her out of nowhere. She caught it in midair, by the wrists, but that didn’t stop the thing from trying to clamp its razor-like teeth on her cheek. De Mona wasn’t worried about the bite turning her, but her body would still have to recover from the infection. The Stalker garbled something in a tongue she didn’t care to decipher just before yanking one of its arms free and trying to tear her head off. De Mona countered with a straight palm to the chest and released the breath she had been holding. She felt its ribs cave in first, then the soft thump as its heart exploded. Though its heart no longer beat, it was the foundation of the demon’s hold on the body, so hitting it served just as well in dispatching a demon as decapitation.

Duck
, she heard in her head just as she spun out of the way of a wayward bullet. “I’m gonna off you, bitch, and write my own ticket!” the crazed cop screamed, firing.

De Mona went in low, with her left arm stretched outward. She connected with the officer’s midsection, doubling him over. She came up behind him and grabbed the man by the back of the neck, shaking him like a rag doll. Unlike the Stalkers, the mortal wasn’t very sturdy.

“You picked the wrong demon to worship,” she breathed in his face. The officer trembled as he thought he smelled faint traces of sulfur. Yanking his head viciously to one side, she snapped his neck and let him crumble to the ground.

With the alley mouth now being clear, her mind screamed for her to flee, but the bloodlust had her and it needed a new target. She pivoted, snarling like an animal, and turned her rage to the man in the black T-shirt,
but to her surprise he was charging her with a very large knife.

“You should’ve just given it over, bitch.” He grinned as he drove the blade into her stomach. The smile melted from his face as the weapon snapped in half on impact.

The man’s terrified stare went from the broken point on the ground to the face of the girl he had been hunting. His veil of darkness still blanketed the alley, but there was a glint of moonlight in her eyes that shouldn’t have been. It was then that he saw what he had been too arrogant to see earlier.

“You ain’t the only game in town,” she said in a voice that sounded like she had too many teeth in her mouth. “Now.” She moved slowly towards him, with her body seeming to bulk up as she went. “Let’s talk about that whore’s position you offered me earlier.”

Five minutes later De Mona came out of the alley at the end she hadn’t been able to see due to the man’s spell. Her hands were stained with something too black to be considered blood, which soaked into the sack. The item inside momentarily pulsed and then went still again. She shook off the haze that was trying to settle over her brain and cursed her parcel. In the short time she had been in possession of the thing, it had cost her everything and everyone she’d known. Redfeather had been the name on her dying father’s lips, and she intended to find him at all costs.

The pain in Sam’s gut was so intense that he found it hard to walk straight. His blond Mohawk was dingy and wilted, and there was no luster left in his normally crisp blue eyes. The seemingly endless river of snot running from his nose had begun to cake around his nostrils and just above his top lip, but appearances were the least of his concerns
at that moment. If he didn’t get a fix soon, he doubted that he’d make it through the night.

Sam had stopped at the mouth of an alley to catch his breath when he heard what sounded like a faint moaning. He tried to peek into the alley, but the darkness was too thick. He was about to keep walking when he heard the voice.

“Help,” it called weakly.

“Who’s there?” Sam called back.

“Please, help me.”

Sam leaned farther into the alley to see if he could get a better look and something grabbed hold of his neck. He grabbed at it, but his hands passed right through the tendril of darkness. The grip was so intense that he could neither scream nor move. All he could do was whimper as the darkness invaded every hole in his body.

“And that, in short, was the rise and fall of the Spanish colonization of the Americas,” Professor Garland was saying while the bored students of his history class listened. He was a bear of a man, with a salt-and-pepper mane of messy hair. “Now.” He turned his Coke-bottle glasses on the students. “Who can tell me the names of three of the last four Spanish colonies to be occupied by the United States after the Spanish-American War ended?” The room was silent. “Come now; we’ve only been talking about this over the last week since over sixty percent of you flunked my exam. I’m sure someone can name me three?” He looked around the room, and save for the young man sitting closest to the window no one would meet his gaze. “All right then, I’ll choose.” His eyes swept over his students and landed on a pretty blonde who was playing with her BlackBerry. “Ms. Reynolds!” His deep voice startled her so bad that she dropped the device. “We’re waiting.”

Katie looked around dumbly because she had no idea what exactly Professor Garland was waiting for. She was more interested in her Facebook page than what he was saying. “I’m sorry?” she said sheepishly.

“You certainly are, Ms. Reynolds; it’s only a pity that you have to be so on my time,” he said in disgust. It was
common for Professor Garland to go into one of his famous rants on a student he felt was slacking off. These rants were legendary throughout all the universities he’d ever taught at, even rumored to have reduced men to tears, and from the look on his face he was about to let Katie have it.

“Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, not necessarily in that order,” a meek voice called from the corner. All eyes turned to see who would be stupid enough to put themselves in Professor Garland’s crosshairs when he was working himself up to a rant. Gabriel adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and looked around trying to figure out why everyone was starting at him. He was a very attractive young man, with sandblasted brown skin and shoulder-length black hair that he never seemed to comb, but as attractive as he was, Gabriel was about as much fun as Professor Garland’s course. Gabriel was the quiet kid who sat in the corner, staring out the window and never saying more than a word or two in class unless it was to Katie Reynolds, and even then his tone was always hushed. He’d sounded confident when he spoke up on behalf of Katie but with Professor Garland’s eye boring into him he wanted to shrink into invisibility.

“Correct, Mr. Redfeather, but I don’t recall presenting that question to you,” Professor Garland said.

“Technically you were. See, you first posed the question to anyone who could answer it. I just chose not to answer at that moment.” Gabriel smiled dumbly as the class erupted with laughter. The only reason he even replied was to keep from vomiting in front of the entire class.

“Okay, Mr. Wiseass.” Professor Garland picked up a thick textbook and flipped through it until he found the section he was looking for. “Since you’re so versed in the subject, let me ask you this: when Columbus failed to gain the support of the king of Portugal whom did he—”

“The monarchs of Castile and Aragon, they financed his little adventure because they wanted a quicker route to reach the traders in Asia,” Gabriel said triumphantly as the class backed him with a chorus of cheers. Katie blew him a kiss, which he caught in his palm. This only pissed Professor Garland off more.

“I’ll see the two of you after class.” Professor Garland slammed the textbook on the table.

Professor Garland spent the better part of twenty minutes chewing out Gabriel and Katie for their little display of defiance in his class. Garland was a man who didn’t take well to
usurpers
, as he called them. He was so upset that Gabriel thought one of the massive veins in his forehead was going to explode. When he’d finally dismissed them, Gabriel looked like he was going to fall apart and Katie could barely suppress the giggle that was rattling around in her gut.

“You were awesome in there,” Katie said to Gabriel while they were walking through the hall.

“He seemed pretty pissed off; I thought he was going to have a heart attack in there,” Gabriel said, fumbling with his glasses. The arm was loose, so they kept sliding down his nose.

“I wish. If old man Garland falls over dead, then maybe we won’t have to take the final exam,” Katie said half-jokingly. “Dude, I thought I was going to shit myself when he asked me about the Mexican-American War.”

“Spanish-American,” he corrected her.

“Whatever.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I wouldn’t know one from the other, which is why I know I’m going to fail that exam and end up back here for summer classes.”

“Katie, have you ever considered studying?” he asked seriously.

“Ew, studying is for geeks.” She covered her mouth
when she realized she’d offended him. “No offense, Gabe, it’s just that I can’t manage to sit still long enough to get through half of that garbage.”