All Hell Breaks Loose (4 page)

Chapter 2

Not for the first time, Gabi cursed her unnatural dislike of driving an automatic.  She loved h
er car.  The bright red Mustang
(
the most recent Shelby GT 500 model
)
with black Le Mans racing stripes was her secret pride and joy
,
and she hated letting anyone else drive it.  But with her arm bandaged so tightly that she couldn’t bend or straighten it, she wasn’t going to be able to shift gears.  Kyle would have to drive
,
and that was going to make him look smug all the way to her house. 
But
even that little fact couldn’t truly piss her off.

Tonight her displays of ill-temper were only a façade.  The team expected ill-temper from her
,
and s
he didn’t want anybody think
ing she wasn’t one hundred percent herself.  But after the fight with the new
Werewolf
,
nothing could dampen her high spirits.  She’d faced her first opponent since her return to the Hunter squad and hadn’t felt a moment’s hesitation or anxiety.  It had felt like slipping back into a comfortable pair of shoes.  Sh
e’d done it.
  She’d proved to herself that she was fine.  She wasn’t going to be freezing in terror or
fleeing
the horrors that she faced as a Hunter.  If she was suffering from PTSD, like the doctors said, it wasn’t affecting her job as a Hunter, and that’s what counted.  She wasn’t going to let her father down
.

Kyle tried to rile her once he was behind the wheel and they were speeding out of the warehouse district.  It didn’t take him long to realise she wasn’t as annoyed as she looked and only another minute to figure out why.

“You’ve proved them all wrong,” he said with a touch of pride in his voice.  “Hellcat is back!”  He smacked the steering wheel with the palm of his hand in triumph.  It was the first time anyone had called her
that
in six weeks.  It felt fantastic.

“Hey, gently with my car,” she warned even as a smile cracked her irritable veneer.

Werewolves
sometimes forgot their own strength.  Even in human form they were faster, stronger and tougher than an uninfected human.  Injuries that would take weeks of healing for a normal person could be healed in mere hours by a
Werewolf
.  While lycanthropy was still generally thought of as a terrible infection and thousands of man
-
hours were being poured into secret research for a cure, there were certainly some advantages for those infected
.

By the time they turned onto her driveway
,
they hadn
’
t come to any conclusions about the
rogue
Werewolf
or their unseen watcher.  Gabi hoped it was just an isolated incident, but Kyle wanted to discuss it with Byron and Alistair, who was the
Werewolf
representative on the SMV Council.  Though the SMV had started out as a small group of like-minded individuals l
e
d by Gabi’s
f
ather and Byron, it had evolved to become a kind of governing body
, with representatives from
most of the supernatural races in the City.  Vampires had always held themselves aloof from the rest, but the recent alliance between Julius’
s
Clan and the SMV had led to an offer being made for Vampires to add their own representative to the SMV Council.  As far as Gabi was aware
,
Julius hadn’t made a decision on that count yet
.

As the new, hi-tech security scanner acknowledged Kyle’s retina scan and began to open the gate for them
,
Gabi agreed with Kyle that keeping Byron and Alistair in the loop was probably a good idea.  The gate closed silently behind them
,
and Kyle drove up to the pretty little house that Gabi called home.  Of course
,
it wasn’t quite the same house it had been six weeks ago.  Her sanctuary had been invaded by
Dant
é
with a small army of Vampires and
Demons
. 
Demons
came from another plane of life (or maybe more appropriately, death) known as the Etherworld.  They were kept separated from our world by the
V
oid, a no-man
’
s-land where nothing survived for long.  Some
Demons
were strong enough to cross into the Void but were still kept in their own world by the Veil
,
a naturally occurring magical boundary powered by the
leylines
of the world and tended and nurtured by the Magi.

Unfortunately
,
there existed a number of places, at least two of those places found right in the City, where the Veil was periodically unstable.  If the right person
or
Demon
came across one of
these weak points at the right time
,
they could literally rip open a doorway to Hell itself
, allowing
Demons
to
cross through and
wreck whatever havoc they could before they were contained and destroyed.  Gabi still shuddered at the thought of the evil creatures being in her home
.
T
hey were disgusting, repulsive things, in varying
monstrous
shapes and sizes.  She often wondered if JRR Tolkien had been a Magus himself, as the
orcs
and several other creatures he described in so much detail in
The Lord of
The
Rings
were
remarkably similar
to what came through the Veil when a portal was forced opened.

Of course
,
the security gate wasn’t the only recent addition to her house.  She hadn’t seen the damage that had been done during the attack; she’d bailed out of her bedroom window to evade the
Demon
army and had run straight into Dantè waiting for her out in the garden.  By the time Jonathon, her Vampire doctor, and Ian, her human doctor, had finally allowed her out of the hospital wing at Julius’s Estate, her house had been renovated and new state-of-the-art security measures had been installed.  Gabi sighed.  She knew they all meant well, but she didn’t think that she really needed to be as well protected as
the Queen of England
.

Aside from an actual bodyguard, she had every security device known to man installed somewhere on the property.  It was the ones not known to man that she was the most reassured by
,
though.  Irene, the Senior Magus of the City, and one of the SMV Council representatives had personally laid a protective ward around the perimeter of Gabi’s house.  Anyone trying to breach the house from the outside was given a very unpleasant zap of Magical energy.  It was keyed to only allow a handful of people into her house without Gabi physically disarming the ward.  To cancel the ward
,
Gabi needed to
touch
a charmed gemstone that had been set into a ring for her and recite a short mental incantation.  The ward automatically re-established itself after an hour if she hadn’t done it herself and would render any intruder unconscious until she cancelled it again.

Apparently it had been thoroughly tested before she was allowed home.  Kyle had thought it thoroughly amusing, as they’d tested it on everyone Byron could lay his hands on.  Of course
,
Kyle
was
one of the few on the safe list, so he’d conveniently avoided
experiencing
the Magical kick in the teeth.

The renovations and security upgrade
s
were a joint effort between Julius and Byron.  Kyle adamantly insisted that he’d tried to temper the extreme security measures but that no one would listen to
him
.  Gabi secretly figured that Kyle had had more than his share of input into the changes.  She wasn’t at all surprised about Byron going off the deep end in trying to keep her safe, but Julius’s involvement surprised her.  He’d never acted as though he thought she was unable to protect herself.  In fact, in the few fights they’d faced together, he’d treated her as nothing less than an equal.  It was one of the most attractive things about him.

When Kyle had told her that Julius, in consultation with Rose (Gabi’s housekeeper), had personally overseen the internal redecoration of the house
,
her heart had done a funny little flip-flop.  She didn’t know exactly how much damage had been done, but she was sure it had been extensive. 
Demons
weren’t known for their subtlety.  Aside from the obvious fresh paint, new carpets and a slight difference in the shade of the new cupboard doors and floorboards, the inside looked as though nothing had happened.  Everything was in its place, including her books and photos.  The only sign of the attack was in some of her small, irreplaceable items.  Some of her books had tears to the
dust jacket
s, some photos had small rips and crumple marks (though the frames were new) and some small
knick-knacks
and curios from her time in Africa were damaged or gone.  Julius had left a note on her mantle; it had read
‘
I know how you feel about scars.  As much as I would like to erase every one of them in your sanctuary
,
I thought you would prefer if I left a
few untouched.’ Thoughts of
the night Julius had traced some of the scars on her body with his cool fingertips h
ad had her fighting back a blush
.

Gabi glanced automatically around the garden as they climbed from the Mustang.  It was now brightly lit with motion-sensor floodlights.  She’d added a few extra pieces of security of her own into the garden, after a promise she’d made to herself while having a verbal stand-off with the completely insane,
Demon
-controlling Vampire and his minions in the middle of a garden filled with nothing useful in a fight.  Kyle was the only person who knew about those additions.

She already planned to have most of the electronic security disconnected once the shock of her being attacked in her own home wore off.  The one exception was the front security gate.  She didn’t think it would be a good idea for unsuspecting humans to be able to get close enough
to the house to hit Irene’s Magical Barrier
.
A
nd Irene’s Magical Barrier was definitely staying. Of all the security in the house
,
that was the one thing that actually made her feel safe and allowed her to get to sleep at night.

The same couldn’t be said for
the
enormous tabby furball that sprang into her arms as she opened the front door.  As usual, Razor ploughed into her with the weight and speed of
a
cannonball.  Gabi’s bruised arm and shoulder gave a twinge of protest
,
but she gripped the monster
-
sized cat with her uninjured right arm and accepted the lovingly delivered
face-rubbing
he bestowed on her.  Kyle stepped around the pair, carefully staying out of Razor’s claw range, and headed for the kitchen to switch on the coffee maker.  Razor glared at him through narrowed eyes from Gabi’s shoulder.  The gigantic cat
did not approve of many people and
Werewolves
were the lowest form of life in his opinion
.

“Are you happy to see us home early for a c
hange?” Gabi crooned to the
cat as she lugged him to the kitchen and deposited him on the counter.

The cat’s purr dominated the room in answer to her question.  This was apparently a signal to the other permanent resident of the house, as a small, pointed, black-masked face poked around the corner
,
and then the rest of the ferret came scampering into the kitchen to join them.  Both of Gabi’s pets had been affected by the
Demon
attack.  Gabi still woke up screaming in rage from recurring nightmares of finding Razor lying in the dirt of her azalea garden
and
bleeding from multiple stab wounds.  One of Dant
é
’s Vampires had exacted revenge on Razor for ripping the Vampire’s eye out in an effort to protect Gabi. 
She still hadn’t had a chance to thank Julius for saving his life.

Since the attack, Razor had taken up the role of house protector while Gabi was asleep.  He refused to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time and prowled the house and her room restlessly as long as she was in bed.  Gabi had amazing powers of mental communication with animals and had met very few that she couldn’t communicate with, but so far, not even she could get Razor to relax and trust the new security systems.  She hoped his anxiety would subside with time, but it was worrying her.  Slinky, the ferret, also wasn’t quite his normal easy-going, relaxed self.  He’d become nervous of strangers and was disinclined to come out and interact with anyone besides Gabi, Rose and Kyle.  If anyone else arrived
,
he simply disappeared until they’d gone.  Razor batted at him good-naturedly as Kyle lifted the ferret onto the counter.  It still amazed Gabi that the fearsome cat had adopted the small, playful ferret.  As Gabi unwound the restrictive bandage from around her arm
,
Kyle set two steaming coffee cups on the counter and dug into a bag of cookies.