The Demon Beside Me (17 page)

Tink smacked me. “Stop grandstanding. Blow them up or something.”

“Is that barrier going to let hellfire through?”

“Only one way to find out, demon.”

I shrugged and lit balls of hellfire. All three angels on the roof moved into defensive stances, the rifles clattering to the roof as they brought shields out to cover their bodies. I flicked the hellfire upwards, aiming for the roof of the building itself rather than them. At this range, with their level of preparation, I’d be lucky to give them anything worse than a sunburn.

It was with great surprise that I noted that I had actually flung several dozen bolts of hellfire, many of which were homing in on the angels, whose slow reactions spoke of a certain level of surprise as well. “I guess I’m better than I thought,” I said.

“Illusions,” Hikari said as the swarm of hellfire struck home.

“Oh. You’re ruining my own illusion here.”

“The illusion of competency?”

“Harsh.” I watched with a practiced eye as my hellfire ate into the roof line. Having worked in construction for the past couple of years, I had a fair idea of what held pieces of buildings up. With the damage to the building already critical, the roof wasn’t all too secure, and burning away at the walls and supports directly underneath their position was bound to have delightful results. When the roof sagged and the three angels disappeared from view amidst a cloud of black smoke, I grinned. “I’d say that’s a certain level of competency.”

“I would have made sure the roof sloped down toward us so we could walk up and finish them,” Hikari said.

“Seriously, demon, you don’t expect us to go in there now, do you?” Tink chimed in. “You know that’s not going to stop them, just slow them down.”

“But I thought that was the entire point, to slow them down until our reinforcements get here?”

Both Tink and Hikari sighed and looked away as if I had said something mortally stupid. I looked to Caleb for help. He shrugged.

Before they could continue their erosion of my ego, the apartment building’s wall burst outwards. For just a moment, I saw our television spin through the air before it crunched through the roof of someone’s SUV. Three angels leaped out from the wrecked building, their clothes shining white, wings arced to catch the air. “I’d say that made them mad,” I said. “But I think they were already mad before.”

“Shut up, demon.” Tink was already drawing runes, but I could hear her breathing hard. Both she and Hikari had already given plenty of blood to power their earlier spells, and as far as I knew, human magic didn’t include regenerative powers. I was starting to feel the burn as well, but converting some of my human blood to ichor would keep me going for a while longer.

The trio of angels leapt toward us, swords out, obviously intent on bringing the fight to us. They bounced between cars in the parking lot, sometimes on top of the car, then spread out. While charging four of us seemed silly, they did hold an advantage in hand to hand combat, especially if at least two of them were fresh and there was at least one more unaccounted for. Our best chance was to drop the odds quickly.

Tink caught one of them with a force spell that nearly tore his left wing off. He spun out in mid leap and bounced off the windshield of a car, leaving a spider web pattern of cracks in the glass. On the opposite side, Hikari came within a hair of incinerating another angel. A pillar of flames threw a car up in the air, barely missing the angel.

“Down, Zay!” Caleb blindsided me and smashed me into the ground. I saw a streak of blue-white fire blaze through the air directly above me. The concussion as it hit a nearby car knocked Caleb off me and I saw stars as I bounced my head against the asphalt. Someone had just tried to light me up with holy fire. If the Choirboys were getting past that predilection for hand-to-hand combat, we were definitely in trouble.

“Got him,” Tink said. She spread her fingers wide and made a one-two pushing motion. The missing angel must have been hiding on the opposite side of the lot, before bouncing into the air to take a shot at me. He made the classic mistake of waiting to see the results of his shot before moving. Tink punished him for it. Two force bolts smashed his wings, sending him flying backwards into the street. I heard the screech of brakes and another crashing sound. I repressed the inclination to laugh.

“You all right, Zay?” Hikari grabbed my hand and hauled me up. “There’s two left, including Victor. He went to ground near the building.”

“I’m fine. Caleb?”

The angel was already on his feet, rolling his shoulders. “A little bruised, nothing serious. Sorry about that, Zay. I barely saw it coming.”

“Thanks, Caleb. Saved my ass.”

“So what’s the story?” Tink demanded. “Two left up? Let’s go put them down.”

“There!” Hikari pointed, then let fly a spell. An angel had put his head around the back of a van nearby. As he pulled it back, Hikari put a force bolt directly through the side of the van. The entire vehicle rocked sideways as metal shredded. The angel cried out, then I heard a thump as he hit the ground.

“Victor?” Caleb shouted. “Where are you, coward?”

“Better a coward than a traitor,” came the return shout. I spun in that direction, but he was nowhere in sight. “The Seraphim will hear of this, Caleb.”

“They will also hear of your unsanctioned assault,” Caleb shouted back. “A foolish, pathetic assault. Did you learn nothing from your previous attempts? We are much harder to kill than you give us credit for.”

“Do you really think this is unsanctioned, Caleb?”

“You would have more resources than these obviously untrained fools, Victor.” Caleb turned quickly. I followed his gaze, but saw nothing. “Spending their lives like this is unconscionable. How many have died for this?”

“They knew the risks going in,” Victor replied. “They knew they were expendable.”

“Aren’t you expendable, too?” I shouted. “Don’t you realize that there will be a hundred demons of my House here any minute, all of them looking for you?”

“Let them look! Let them come!” Victor appeared in front of the merrily burning apartment building, his two swords held crossed in front of him. “They won’t get here in time, demon. Not in time for you.”

I lifted my right hand and cut a clean slice across my palm, letting ichor pool there. “They won’t find anything but pieces of you.”

Tink smeared her bloody palm across mine, mixing the blood and ichor. I felt an unaccustomed warmth in my hand as her touch lifted. “We’ve felled far stronger than you with this,” she said. “You’ve been lucky so far, Victor. Now you’ve really pissed me off.”

“Oh, the famed amplification again?” He spread his arms wide. “Let’s see what you can do with it.”

I lit a ball of hellfire as she created the force rune. “I can’t believe he’s just going to eat this,” she muttered.

“Angels are weird,” I said. “Some sort of warrior honor, no doubt.”

“Whatever. Maybe it’ll convince them that we aren’t to be fucked with.”

“Maybe. Is this good enough?”

“It’s fine.” She balled her fist and grinned. “Say good night, Victor.”

Her fist slammed into the rune hanging in midair. The force pulse struck my ball of hellfire and carried it along. Instead of the contained streak of light we usually saw, the blast sputtered and spit out chunks of hellfire along its path. The force pulse itself seemed to stutter in midair, curving in its path before diving toward the ground just in front of Victor. The bolt took him clean in the upper thigh. What was left of the hellfire exploded, sending him flying with a howl of pain.

“That should have blown a hole right through him,” Tink said. She stared at her palm, smeared liberally with red and green. “This isn’t right. Look, it’s not mixing.”

I peered at her palm. Our blood usually mixed, but as she said, this time our blood had formed layers and was resisting the mixture. The combined spell had certainly been more powerful than either of us could have managed alone, but nowhere near what we had done before. “There’s something wrong here,” I said. “There’s something very wrong here.”

Before either of us could investigate our blood closer, Victor popped up from where he had fallen. Caleb took a step toward him, sword and shield raised. The archangel spun and started running away, stumbling every time his weight dropped onto his injured leg. “Discretion is, in fact, the better part of valor,” I said.

“I’m going to get him,” Caleb said, his wings shimmering into place. “Get him, bring him back here, and let you decide whether you want to end it this time.”

“You do that.” I watched him go, then felt a hand on my shoulder. “Hikari?”

“I’m going to start working the area,” she said quietly. “There’ll be a lot of injured civilians around, no doubt. I’ll put in a call to our conclave. We can at least start picking up the pieces here.”

“All right.” She walked off in the opposite direction from Caleb and I looked to Tink, who was still staring at the blood on her hands. She didn’t show any signs of wanting to talk, so I took a seat on the nearest car hood. The hood crumpled. I stood back up and reversed my transfiguration, resuming my human form. My muscles immediately started to protest my comparatively thin blood replaced my resource-rich ichor. I groaned and sat down on another car.

“Hey, demon. What went wrong?” I looked up. Tink wasn’t looking at me, her gaze still focused on her hands. “I’ve never seen that happen before, not through all the time we’ve been contracted.”

I opened my mouth. No words came out. Her head snapped up and she looked over her shoulder at me, almost as if she had read my thoughts. I looked down at the ground. I heard the scuffle of her shoes crossing the distance between us, then she grabbed my face and squeezed. “Ow, what the hell, Tink?”

“You look me in the eye, demon.”

“I am looking you in the eye, Tinkerbell.”

“You tell me, demon, what’s the status of our contract?”

I tried to keep eye contact with her. I tried like hell not to look away. I failed. “What do you mean, the status of-”

She squeezed again, almost bringing tears to my eyes. “Don’t bullshit me, demon.”

I reached up, peeled her hands off my cheeks, and sighed. “What do you think?”

“I think you’ve been lying to me.”

I started to shake my head, but then stopped myself. “A lie of omission. You probably barely remember that night. You had a bit much to drink. Brought you back here, but Hikari-”

“But Hikari what?” she hissed. “She stopped you from forming a new contract with me? Did she put a knife to your throat?”

“No, only you do that,” I said. “She just said I had to choose between staying with her or contracting with you. She was tired of always being second to the contract.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, demon.” Tink spun around. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would you have done?” I asked.

“I would have told you that you were a damned fool. I would have told you that you shouldn’t let her pressure you like that. That she doesn’t love you. That she’s just trying to isolate and control you.” Her shoulders drooped. “And then I would have let you do it.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You’ve told me so many times that it’s your choice to make, even if you’re being a complete idiot. Which you are, but it’s your choice to be a raging moron or not.”

“I don’t know what to say, Tink.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, demon. I’m not like you.” She whirled around and her expression was as cold as I’d ever seen. “I’m not going to tell you I’m not hurt, because I am. I’m pissed at you because you didn’t tell me. You probably weren’t ever going to tell me. I’m angry because you blew off our contract for that bitch. You know I can’t stand how she treats you and this is just reinforcing that image I have of her.”

“Well, you tell me who I was supposed to hurt,” I said. “One way or the other, someone was getting hurt, and that’s not even counting myself.”

“Don’t expect me to believe that you agonized over it.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I agreed to it to shut her up. I hoped that we’d get a chance to quietly renew it down the line after she had calmed down.”

“Are you fucking stupid?” She spun around again and stepped right up to me. “Demon, you’re not going to be able to keep playing both ends against the middle forever. Can’t you see that? She’s going to keep demanding more and more of you until she has exactly all of you that she wants. Then what? You’ll be completely reliant on her, isolated from all of your friends. You know it’s already started.”

“What about you?”

She flinched back. “What do you mean?”

“Are you trying to pull me in the other direction? Into your orbit?”

“I’ve said this already, demon, but are you an idiot?” She shook her head. “Even with all of this shit going on, I’m trying to help you. I know you well enough to see that you’re going to be unhappy if you stick with her.”

“This is all very touching.” The voice that cut in was so unexpected, we both jumped. “I hate to interrupt, but we have unfinished business, you and I.”

I looked toward the ruined apartment building, where Caleb had run in pursuit of Victor. The archangel stood there, uninjured, his wings folded behind his back and his arms crossed. Two angels stood at his flanks. “Apparently you’re tougher than I thought,” I said, standing up. I had bled off enough ichor that I wasn’t ready for a fight, but I’d be more ready than Tink.

“Apparently you’re more gullible than I thought,” Victor said. He unfolded his arms and his twin scimitars appeared in his hands. “I’m not the only angel to prefer these.”

“Then who is Caleb chasing?” I asked.

“Someone else,” Victor said. He started walking forward, his swords held low. His guards brought their own weapons out and joined him. “Truly, halfbreed, don’t you understand simple tactics? Never divide your force in the face of a superior opponent.”

“Your forces weren’t exactly superior after we took most of them apart,” I pointed out. Tink was already preparing runes while they slowly advanced on us. “That was a waste of manpower.”