Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) (22 page)

“But it’s so much fun.” He walked away and started the shower. I listened to the hiss of water as I struggled to sit, and climb to my feet.

“Clean yourself up,” he said, “then join Hiro and me in the office.
There’s news. Bad news.” He walked away.

I made it to the shower and added more hot water. Standing under the spray, I wondered what had hit the fan now. Torn by curiosity, I hurried things along and soon emerged a little more awake. I shaved, gelled my hair, and returned to my bedroom.
The light coming in the window was dimming. Sunset wasn’t far off. I needed to dress for battle, but m
y stuff was no longer on the bed.

Off to the side, a martial arts head and torso
on a stand
had been brought in. The
limbless
rubber dude was usually used to practice pressure point
attack
s
where
clearly marked. This
guy
had been turned into a clotheshorse of sorts.
My night suit, weapons harness, and long coat
were
settled over it.
The gear looked better on me, but I was glad to have the dummy. It spruced up the place nicely and gave me someone to talk to for intelligent conversation.

Speaking of which, I was running late.
Dressed,
I
ran across the house, seeing no sign of Leona. I entered the bar and swerved toward the fireplace and the furniture there. The chair William had destroyed had been replaced by a wingback chair with crimson leather and brass tacks. Hiro sat there. Old Man stood at the fireplace, his back to me.

I walked over and dropped on the couch.

Hiro look tired
and years older.

“What is it this time?”
I asked.

“They
’ve found
Haruka’s friend
Jessie
. Her
body
’s
in Japan.”

T
WENTY
-TWO

It hurts to
k
il
l
; i
t
never lasts long enough.
”

—Caine Deathwalker

I frowned. “The succubus took the girls
to Japan
and killed one of them?”

Old Man turned from the fireplace. He smoldered with
rage. There were actual blue flames leaping out, obscuring his eyeballs. “
Jessie
’s been dead for at le
a
st three weeks.”

“Damn, I
really
need a drink.”
I felt like I’d been sucker punched.
“Hey, w
hy
didn’t
we see it
,
Old Man, why
didn’t
we sense that
the
Jessie
we met
was
a demon
?”

He locked his hands behind his back. T
he flames of his eyes settled down
, becoming sapphire coals
a
s
he went introspective.
“
Probably a doppelganger spell;
lets you look and feel like some
one else
,
but it’s trick
y
to keep
it
going and harder to mask
it
from
people like us
. It’s why the succubus needs Sarah
.”

I
said
,
“Okay, this sucks, but at least now I only have one person to get back
.
” I turned toward
Hiro
. “D
id you speak about us in front of Jessie?”

He nodded sharply, eyes widening.
Claw like hands gripped the armrests of his chair.
“Yes, every time I spoke about the situation
,
she was there with Haruka
.
”

“How much did you tell her?”

“I to
ld
Haruka
s
he would be safe”

“Did you tell her our clan name?”

A name like a smear of shadow in the mists of legend, a name respected far and wide in the preternatural communities.

He said, “Yes.”

“No wonder we were attacked as soon as we hit the scene.” I thought of the
Catholic
Mission
where Sarah had been mucking about. The place offered power to anyone able to corrupt the holy site.
“Well, at least we know where the ritual will be taking place. I need to head out.”

“I’m coming along,” Old Man said.

“Me too,” Leona added.

I jolted in place, half drawing one of my PPKs. “Where the hell did you come from?”

She snorted in amusement. “I’m a spirit beast, remember. Fading in and out is what I do.”

I scowled at her and holstered my gun.

“I’m coming too,” Hiro said.

I glared at him. “I’ll kill you myself before I let you breach our contract by getting yourself killed.”

Hiro cast a glance at Old Man
,
a
silent appeal.

Old Man shook his head. “Sorry, my friend. The pup is right. Y
our battles are fought in board
rooms. If we have to divide our attention to keep you safe during a rescue, it puts Haruka in greater danger.”

Hiro sighed and nodded. “I understand. I will wait here.”

The rest of us headed out to my car. Old Man could have opened a demon gate, but the magic might set off alarms where we were going. As I started the engine, Izumi’s computer simulated voice came out of the speakers, greeting me warmly.

Old Man raised an eyebrow at me.

“What?” I said.

He looked forward
again, saying
nothing.

We didn’t talk much while I drove to the
M
ission. Once in the neighborhood, the air grew heavy, dead with foreboding. Old Man studied the church as we parked across the street. Leona did the same. The church looked closed, but I could feel an aura of old magic peeling off it in cold, clammy waves.

Old Man’s eyes blazed for a moment. The blue-green glow caught my attention. He pointed at the shadows around the church and the elm trees near it.

I watched the shadows stir. “That’s not the wind.” I counted seven
of them
and put up fingers, telling the Old Man how many I saw.

He raised an eyebrow and put up ten fingers, then four.
I’d guessed wrong.
A moment later, he put his hand on his face and shook his head in blatant disappointment.

I gave him the bird.

“Can you tell who or what they are?” Old Man asked.

Always testing.
“Yeah, I can. Can you open the glove box?”

He did. “When did you put a mini bar in here?”

“A few weeks ago when I got charged five hundred bucks for a single drink at a trendy new night club.”

Sometimes L.A. really sucks
.

“And humans call
us
demons.” Old man handed me a
shot of Jack Daniels
and
poured
one for himself.

Leona butted in, “This is what you guys talk about when you’re
on
a stak
e
out?”

We looked at each other, turned in the seat to stare back at Leona, then faced the church
.
I said,
“Sometimes, Old Man gives me coloring books and crayons, but I’m not very good about staying inside the lines.”

We climbed out and
got half way across the street before pack magic hit us,
like a wall
of ice
.
Ignoring it, Leona disappeared like the spirit beast she was.
The air smelled
sour
as
stale f
ear.
G
ibber
ing laughter
crackled like
goblin song
,
scrap
ing
the pavement like
fallen
leaves.
Four-legged
shadows
with hell-fire eyes
scampered a
round us.

“Illusion,” Old Man said, “an attempt to stampede us so we can be run to ground.”

We staggered
,
but managed another
few
step
s
.
Undaunted,
Old Man
rumbled low in his throat, a sound of
gleeful
anticipation.
My protective shield warmed to life and I winced, a
splinter of ice dr
i
v
ing
like a nail
between my eyes.
Touched by my expanding shield, t
he red-eyed shadows dissolved
. T
he
wild
laughter thinned and died with a last ghostly moan
, and the
air went back to smelling as polluted as ever.
The wolves had just tried to take me out with pack magic.

We looked back to
ward
the trees where the shadows had come from. There were more of them now, these ones real.
H
alf of
William’s
pack
c
a
me out into the open, spreading out between us and the church.
Angie
hung back,
stay
ing
close to the
building’s front double doors. W
illiam himself approached us, mostly in human form, but with hands turned to claws, his jaw distended, bristling with large pointy teeth—the better to eat you with.

William
locked eyes with Old Man
.

Big mistake.

The wolf
was used to staring down his own kind. Someone should have told him meeting demon eyes
was uniquely
danger
ou
s
, depending on the demon in question
.
Old Man
didn’t need pack magic to induce the
chill
of
death
,
the
paralysis
of fear.
He just had to bring his deeper self out of hiding.
Tens of thousands had died to wash his honor clean.
He was the
P
ower that had shattered an island continent
at
the dawn of time. The towers of Atlantis had
crumbled before
his rage. The seas had answered his call.
S
avage storms had howled with madness, writing his name in runes of lightening on winding sheets of rain.
With everything dear to him, Old Man had consigned his own demon race to a water
y
grave. It was why he
was
the last Atlantean.

William’s inner
beast
would
n’t understand
these things
, but he
’
d feel nightmare
squeezing his heart, melting his courage
to
the bone.
He
broke eye contact,
his feet rooting to the pavement
.

Old Man smiled
. Darkness shadowed his face and his killing hand.
Dark clouds pil
ed
up overhead. Thunder grumbled.
Writhing s
nakes
of lightning spun from thunderhead to thunderhead. The earth shuddered like a cowering behemoth.

I
called to
Old Man
,
“
Don’t damage my city.”

“Not likely,” he said.
“I am not as powerful as I once was.”

“Okay,
I’ll take William and Angie
. Y
ou take the rest.
”

“No,
” he said, “I’ve got
William
. Y
ou take the rest
.
”

Fading in
, in
mid-leap
Leona
shrieked, “Mine!” She
dropp
ed
like a
buzz saw
onto William.
They hit the ground in a whirling, snarl
ed
mass of fur, teeth, and claws.
Blood streamed from gaping wounds. Blindly, William tried to pry the jungle cat off him. She had his head in her jaws, trying to crack it like an oversized egg.
William went to pounding on her sides, trying to drive her ribs into heart and lungs.
M
aking herself solid enough to attack, she
was
solid enough to take damage.

Old Man went to help her.

I spun to face the street behind me. Three
new
,
oversized
wolves were almost on me
.
I opened fire, glad
a lot of
my clips tonight were silver h
o
llow-points. The wolves
shook as I stitched
with
fire
,
round after round. Shredding silver carved up their internal organs, creating wounds that could not be healed by a werewolf.
Their roars collapsed into hacking barks and yelps as they fell twitching at my feet, eyes glazing in death, blood
pool
ing
on
the
pavement.

I spun back to the Mission, resuming fire on the rest
of the
wolves.

I expected them to charge, but they held their ground, lifting muzzles to the sky, howling
.
T
heir song
pierced the night, ringing out, stirring the short hairs at the nape of my neck.
This wasn’t pack magic. Something worse. From the surrounding blocks, the call was echoed by new voices.
There were even howls from inside the church.

The wolves had been recruiting. That meant
the priests
,
the homeless, wandering
thieves, pimps
, and hookers tending their corners had been blooded, infected on a massive scale.

William had seen how things might go, and had sent
out th
e missing members of his pack to build an army. The
new converts
wouldn’t be e
x
perienced wolves able to control themselves
, able to take human form at will
.
They’d be driven by blood lust alone.

William was past caring about that
,
into a win-at-all-costs mentality. Worse, he was exposing us all to the human world. This kind of thing was why wolves had been banned
from L.A. years ago.