Demon Driven (2 page)

I nodded. My whole echo-sonar ability was a
fairly recent development and I was still adjusting to it.

“Look, if she had been real, I wouldn't have
done that, but it all seemed too game-like to me. Now, I'm going to
go from this -- “I waved my hand around us” -- to sparring with
Tatiana. Not even remotely similar. If the girl was real, even if
she had been Turned, I could have taken the gun from her and
secured her without much chance of damage to myself.”

Gina knew my abilities as well as any of the
squad, better even, and she certainly suspected more, but she
looked a little shocked at my confession.

“You're that much faster than a new vampire?”
she asked.

“Yeah, at least fast enough,” I answered.

Truth be told, I'm that much faster than a
hundred-year-old vamp. I'm nowhere near as fast as Tanya, but I'm
head and shoulders above anyone in the New York coven, except maybe
Arkady, Tanya’s giant chief of security.

“Is it that useless then?” she asked.

“No. It's not useless. It's good for my
shooting. I mean, I can't go around shooting at real vamps or
weres, now can I? It’s also as good as we can get for training the
rest of the team,” I said. “Look, you’re right. I shouldn’t have
shot the hostage, even if I was taking fire. But these things are
just so damned frustrating!”

She pursed her lips as she thought about my
words.

“Chris, I get what you’re saying about the
simulations, but your response still seems excessive. And on top of
that, you have been really edgy lately. Quick to blow up, so to
speak. People have noticed.”

I was aware of her careful gaze as I
reflected on the truth in her statement. I had been running a short
fuse lately, and I had absolutely no idea why. She read my own lack
of answers on my face. Gina is skilled in reading micro
expressions, the result of intensive training in what’s become
known as facial coding.

“Look, let’s talk about this some more later.
The Inspector is due here in a few moments, hopefully with the new
Commissioner in tow. Are you ready for a demonstration?” she
asked.

The squad’s leader, Inspector Martin Roma,
had been trying for two months to get the new Police Commissioner
to learn more about our group. The NYPD Special Situations Squad is
off the official org chart, but has been in existence in one form
or another for decades. Formed to deal with the unexplainable world
of the supernatural, the head of the squad always reports directly
to the Commissioner. When the new mayor had swept into office last
November on a platform of social issues, he had fired the old
Commissioner and brought in his handpicked replacement. Said
replacement hadn’t taken his Department of Homeland Security
briefing on things that go bump in the night very seriously. DHS
has their own paranormal combat team, and they are responsible for
coordinating and educating each of the big city teams. Each new
commissioner gets their own dog and pony show (or maybe I should
say – wolf and bat show) from the feddies. Commissioner Kane hadn’t
believed a word of it and thought our squad a waste of money and
man power.

In a way, we were victims of our own success.
Crimes that fit a paranormal MO had fallen off drastically, the
result of Tanya’s control of the New York Coven and my own recent
liaison with the city’s Pack. Even demon activity, my personal area
of expertise, had dried up since the events of last Halloween.

I heard Roma’s voice greeting Aikens and
Sommers in the stairwell, but it was too faint for Gina to hear.
She noticed the tilt of my head as I listened and guessed the
reason.

“Roma here?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t hear any other
voices.”

“Dammit! If we can’t convince Kane how
important the squad is, he’ll do something stupid,” she said.

“You mean like shut us down?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything but her grim look was
answer enough.

The stairwell door opened and Inspector
Martin Roma stepped out. Lean and athletic, average height, dark
hair, neatly trimmed goatee, he alternately reminded me of either a
corporate attorney or a college professor, depending on his manner
of dress. Today he was channeling the corporate image with a
charcoal Armani suit. He smiled at the two of us, but the lines in
his forehead never relaxed.

“No Commissioner Kane, I see.” Gina greeted
him.

He shook his head and sighed before
answering.

“I was really hoping to show him the plastic
explosive thing at least. No end of uses to that one,” he said.

The unique ability I was born with, the
violet energy I used to banish demons, had undergone almost as many
changes during my transformation as my body had. One of the results
was a rather nifty ability to change the chemical structure of a
compound with nothing but my will. Among other useful applications,
it was great for rendering explosives inert (although I had once
used it to change Sommers’ sunscreen to pink dye to nice effect).
It put a whole new light on bomb defusing, especially since I could
do it from a short distance away and no one around me would have
any idea of what I had done.

“Well, I’ll just have to keep after him,
won’t I? Now, how did the latest simulation go?” he asked.

After a quick glance at me, Gina answered
him. “We have some more bugs to work out and the wolfbot took a
really bad hit.”

It seemed that part of Gina’s role as my
handler was to shield my personal issues from everyone else. I had
no doubt that she kept Roma informed of my mental condition,
abilities and stability, but she steadfastly protected me from
undue criticism. As much as she would take me to task over my
temper issues, she wasn’t going to embarrass me in front of our
boss. I’m pretty sure that Roma was aware of this.

“What manner of abuse did you heap on the
poor, defenseless wolf, Gordon?” he asked.

“Um, it wasn’t where I thought it was and it
startled me, Sir,” I answered.

“He jumped over it, upside down and shot it
through the top of its skull,” Gina said.

The Inspector arched one aristocratic eyebrow
as he looked from her to me.

“If I recall, wolfbot doesn’t have any gel on
top of its head,” he said.

I grimaced as I responded, “No sir, it
doesn’t. I’m afraid that Chet is not real happy with me at the
moment.”

He chuckled as he thought about it. “Oh don’t
let him fool you. Chet is mostly upset that his design has a flaw.
I’ll bet you that will be changed when the wolf comes back.”

“I don’t think I’ll take that bet, Sir,” I
answered.

He looked at his watch. “Well, since we don’t
need you to perform any magic tricks, why don’t you head out early?
The sooner you start, the quicker your girl will be done beating
you up, right?”

“Thank you for reminding me of the pain that
awaits me.”

He laughed. “She only wants you to be
prepared to protect yourself. I’m sure she won’t hurt you too
badly.”

He obviously had never worked out with Tanya
before.

Chapter 2

Perhaps this is a good time for some
background. It should be apparent from some of my actions and
comments that I'm not quite normal. Actually, freak of nature would
be a good term to use, except that I don't think nature has much to
do with it. Maybe freak of the supernatural would be better.

But I digress; the short version goes like
this: My family was murdered by an axe-wielding stranger when I was
eight. I, being a paragon of bravery, hid in the back of my
brother's closet in a quivering mass of fear. That the monster in a
man's body didn't find me seemed a miracle. But when I was twelve
and living with my grandfather, I discovered an ability to banish
demons, and learned from the demons that I exorcised that the
stranger who murdered my family had been a demon in a body that was
empty of a human soul. I call them Hellbourne. So, I embarked on a
life of demon hunting; both the housebound kind that form the basis
of all those horror movies that teens love to watch, as well as the
more dangerous, mobile kind, the Hellbourne (think Jason from
Friday the 13
^th
). Eventually, I left
the northern New York farm of my childhood (or maybe junior demon
hunter-hood is more apt), and moved to the Big Apple to increase my
odds. Makes sense; more people, more demons.

I joined the NYPD, mostly because it was the
only legal way to carry a gun, and started hunting. A week before
my twenty-third birthday, I encountered a demon intent on killing a
girl at a nightclub. I saved her, only to discover she was a
vampire. Actually, Tatiana Demidova (Tanya to her friends) was more
of a vampire princess, being the only known naturally born vampire.
Oh, and her birthdate just happened to be the exact same as mine.
Halloween....at midnight. Creepy, huh?

We exchanged cell phone numbers, as well as
large amounts of blood (well, large amounts of my blood, just a
little of hers), and just like that we were an item. Only her blood
had a pronounced effect on me physically. I got stronger, faster,
healed quicker and developed acute senses, not to mention, a really
heavy-duty appetite. My body lost almost all of its fat, something
I had little of to begin with, and apparently, my outward
appearance changed as well.

Growing up as a demon hunter adds a whole new
level of school outcast to the list. In high school, I fell below
the audio-visual and math club geeks on the social ladder. My
exceptionally strange violet eye color hadn't helped in the
slightest. So I learned to stay unnoticed, under the radar, so to
speak.

Tanya's blood pretty much shot that all to
pieces. My skin got darker, like a Native American’s (I'm Scottish,
Irish, and some Russian), my cheekbones seemed more pronounced and
my eyes got even freakier, which all together, somehow made me a
lot more noticeable. Women (and some men) stare at me, pretty much
wherever I go. Gina says it's because I'm 'hot'. Whatever the
reason, it makes me nervous. It’s not like I could ever act on
their attraction. Okay, that’s a lie, I could, I just wouldn’t.
First and foremost, I have Tanya. I never expected to find anyone I
could have a life with, but then she dropped into my life. I don’t
deserve her, I didn’t dream someone like her would ever choose me
and I would never seek another. But if I did, the women I went out
with wouldn’t like the results. They would all be pretty much demon
targets. Or worse, Tanya targets.

So, where was I? Oh yeah. Tanya. Five foot
five inches tall, raven hair, sapphire blue eyes, smokin' hot body.
Gorgeous? Too lame. Stunning? Completely inadequate. If she walked,
completely dressed, into a Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show,
all eyes would be on her, even the thong- and bustier-wearing
models'. None of which matters much to her. She's kinda serious
much of the time, intent on helping her people. That's not to say
she can't laugh or enjoy a good joke, she just concentrates on
things she deems important. Like fighting. At age twenty-three,
only the two surviving Elders can beat her in close quarters
combat. Barely. Being a natural born vampire, well, being
the
natural born vampire, she is as fast and strong as a
thousand-year-old vamp. She inherited her mother Galina Demidova’s
business mind, and is easily able to manage the New York Coven's
sprawling investments and real estate holdings. But the topic she
is most serious about is ... me. On a scale of one to ten, I rank
about twenty. That's what Lydia says. Lydia is the young vampire
(eighty years old) who is Tanya's confidant, assistant, de facto
sister, and all around Girl Friday. She's also a major league pain
in my ass. Not that we aren’t good friends, we are. It’s just that
she takes major delight in tormenting me. She says a girl has to
have a hobby.

But back to Tanya. See, vampires tend to
fixate on one mate and their focus is extremely intense. And once a
vampire has decided, by whatever internal reasons they value, on
their mate, well, that’s pretty much it. They don’t waiver, stray,
or lose focus. Ever. At least, that’s how it’s been explained to
me. I’m not a vampire. Not a were either. Nope, I’m an altogether
new kind of freak. So I keep waiting for Tanya to come to her
senses and realize I’m not the one. But that hasn’t happened in the
seven months we’ve been together. She’s just as attentive and
loving as when I first met her, as well as protective and
territorial. Very territorial. Scary territorial.

Chapter 3

I cleaned up my guns and gear, the red
Simunitions dye on my armor carrier taking the longest, then headed
out. Since our training facility was already in Brooklyn, getting
to Tanya’s was quick and easy. So quick that I stopped for a snack,
sort of a pre-dinner dinner. My caloric requirements have
diminished but it still takes work to eat eight thousand calories a
day. I opted for a smoked turkey club with fries from a deli two
blocks from Tanya’s house.

The Demidova residence is a five-story
brownstone on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights. Expensive, stylish
and furnished with priceless antiques, it was home to Tanya, her
mother Galina (when she was in the US), Lydia, and a rotating
number of other vamps. As near as I could figure, the New York
Coven numbered between three hundred and five hundred vampires,
spread around the city. It sounds like a lot, but in a city of
eight million souls, several hundred beings of any type are a drop
in the bucket. The Willow Street residence was the headquarters for
the Coven and the center of the Demidova business empire. Being a
vampire in the Coven means more than being part of a family. In
addition to providing a sense of belonging and emotional support
(yeah, vampires and emotional support don’t seem to go together),
every vampire in the Coven was also a share member in the Coven’s
wealth. Structured like a supernatural privately-owned corporation,
vampires accrue shares in the Coven as they age. Elders Senka and
Tzao were the largest shareholders, naturally enough. Galina owned
many shares, due to both her age (two hundred-seventy years) and
her amazing business sense. Shares could be earned or awarded based
on service to the Coven. Tanya owned almost as many shares as her
mother, the result of gifts from Senka, her mother and other
vampires, who treated my young vampire as pureblood royalty.