Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) (3 page)

“Okay, you got a deal. Now, show me the girl.”

THREE

“Hi, I can see your panties.”

—
Caine Deathwalker

Hiro waved at the loft, “Haruka, Jessie, come down here, please.”

I used the opportunity to grab a small bottle of hot sake from the small table beside Hiro’s leather wingchair.

Old Man gave me a glare that failed to induce contrition.

Maybe next time
.

I took a sip and moved away from the fireplace.

There were family members, servants, and security milling around, pretending this was a social gathering. That illusion broke as the space in front of me cleared, and two high school girls from the loft reached the bottom landing. Faces composed, dark eyes glittering, hair fanning like raven’s wings; they came toward me on the way to Hiro. The girl in front would be the heir. She wore a cherry blossom print kimono, a real beauty, porcelain skin, high cheeky bones, pale pink lipstick the color of cherry blossoms. No one would ever call her cute—only amazing—I knew this much despite the damn kimono hiding her best features.

The second girl was white European, and taller, five-seven, wearing a woman’s business suit. I made an automatic calculation; five-seven, twenty-two waist, thirty-two hips, and thirty-four C tits. Her ass-long hair had been dyed a soft brown and streaked with vibrant red tones. It looked like she wore colored contact lenses. Her eyes were gem-like, cobalt blue. Her bright red lipstick made me want to lick her lips for her. Her beauty was more earthly; cute with a side of come-fuck-me.

I downed the bottle while they passed me, and I noticed every man in the room targeting the girls, facing them like sunflowers moving with the sun.

I heard the distinctive slithe
r
of steel blades, leaving their
sheathes in the foyer. The main doors opened and the guards staggered in, weapons in hand. Their eyes were empty, their faces slack. Facing their demon-slaying weapons, I felt my own magic stir in resonation, as if cascading feathers were lightly brushing my skin, leaving a warm tingle. I cross-pulled my twin PPK nines.

They were already cocked, so I only needed to thumb off the safeties. I called out to all those
not
under the mind-bending influence, “If you don’t want to die, get your collective asses outta here.” I shot twice, hitting two of the advancing guards between the eyes. “Old Man, get the girls and Hiro out on the balcony.”

Female screams sliced the air. The women scattered, ducking behind furniture, hurrying toward the stairs to the loft, and breaking for the balcony where we were heading. Old Man put his arm around Hiro, making him look like a confused child, and hurried him around the free-standing fireplace to the French doors. Haruka followed,
her friend stayed a step behind
.

I targeted the leading edge of attackers, squeezing off carefully accurate shots. Red dots appeared between their eyes. The exit wounds in back of their heads were quite a bit messier. With scrambled brains, the puppet strings were cut. The bodies collapsed and did not rise again.

Male relatives that were inside the room when the attack began were now lurching at me, taking the place of those down. And they had less distance to cover. There were even bodies launching themselves from the upper loft, with no thought of t
he damage they were acquiring.

“Leona, a little help,” I suggested.

She hit the closest group of men, ripping them apart with slashing claws, and bites that removed entire faces, whirling from one enemy to another in a constant, smooth play of feline muscle.

Elsewhere, one of the last mind-controlled guards advanced with his demon-slayer blade raised above his head. I shot out an eye. The sword fell to the carpet beside its wiel
der. Another enemy snagged it,
slashing. Scampering aside, Leona barely avoided damage.

“Go to Old Man,” I told her. I retreated as well, dragging a loveseat along to wedge in a French door. A body dropped near me and collapsed a small wood table. On his belly, the puppet clawed at me, flailing slowly at my ankles. I pulled the couch over him and kept retreating. Seeing what I was doing, some of the women united their efforts to copy me, blocking other balcony doors as best they could.

A guard with a crossbow aimed. His bolt sped through the air, as I shifted my hips. The bolt glanced off one of my shoulder holsters, deflected into a lamp that shattered. The weapon’s design allowed a second bolt to be fired before reloading. That bolt zipped over my shoulder and broke a pane in the French doors. A small scream from outside told me it had hit somebody.

I emptied my clips, taking less care where my shots went, and then I was outside, holstering my weapons. I wedged my loveseat as best I could while the guard with the crossbow reloaded.

As the puppets reached the barricades, they clawed at hem. I took the opportunity to race away; joining those huddled across the rooftop garden. There was a fire escape. Many of the guests were stomping down the steel stairs, headed for the street. Old Man yelled down at them, “Don’t stop for anything.”

I looked back at the barricades. They were being pulled clear. We were running out of time.

The guard with the crossbow stepped out on the expansive balcony deck. He raised his weapon for another couple shots. The human puppet behind him staggered past, accidentally loping off the man’s head, one small favor to be grateful for. A wild shot went up into the air.

I
changed clips in my weapons as a swarm of bodies staggered at me. For some reason, I was everybody’s favorite target.

A sword came at me.
My right gun spat flame and lead slugs. The men made no effort to dodge my withering fire.

“Wow, you guys suck,” I told them.

Old Man called out behind me, “Come on, we’re the last.”

I backed to the edge of the building, firing methodically as I went. My clips emptied and I holstered my guns. “After you,” I said.

Man looked at me like I was too stupid to live. “I’m an Atlantean demon, remember. Get the hell outta here so I can cut loose.

Having no wish to be part of that, I vaulted the wall and landed on an iron grate with a drop-down ladder that reached the street. The ladder was clogged with desperate women, Hiro in their midst along with Haruka and Jessie. I saw no sign of Leona—until she faded into view next to me, her yellow eyes flaming bright with excitement.

I heard chanting, shaped by a voice that was no longer human. A demon spell was being forged, word by word, burning the air’s oxygen into ozone. Had anyone human tried to pronounce such words, his larynx would have shredded and his throat filled with blood. It was one of the reason I used dragon-style magic instead of demon.

I dropped down on my knees, keeping my head low. Leona nudged in next to me so that if there was any backwash from the roof, I’d take the brunt of it for her. Spirit leopards are often too cleaver for everyone else’s good.

The sky above turned dark. Purple-white jags of lightning webbed the gathering storm, licking the underbellies of roiling clouds. A sulfur-scented rain fell, mostly on this one building.

Old Man hollered, “Fire in the hole!”

Balls of lightning dropped onto the building, the ultimate flash bang grenades. Damp winds screamed obscenities in a thousand demon tongues, spiraling off the roof, tearing at me as they expanded out across the alley to the next building over. At the core of the windstorm, a funnel formed, reaching down from the overhead clouds. A blue-gray funnel detached, inverting in the air so the base was wide and the upper portion a narrow tip, a water-spout looking for a place to kill. This was Old Man’s trademark. Most demons used fire or ice, but not him. His demon magic had been good enough to sink Atlantis; he saw no reason to change just because a few thousand years had passed.

“We are about to get very wet,” I told Leona, visualizing a flood of water scouring everything out of the penthouse not nailed down.

“Climb on,” Leona said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

I
shouted over the wind. “There’s a time and place for sex you know?”

She growled. “A ride down to the street, you idiot!”

I threw a leg over her back, getting a good grip on her shoulders, as her tail wound around my waist like a seatbelt. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Instead of answering, she leaped off the fire escape. Silver-blue fire swirled around her paws, giving her traction
midair
so we didn’t fall as we crossed the alley, ping-ponging off our building and the next over while dropping to the alley pavement. We landed running, but slowed after several steps. As Leona’s tail pulled away, I stepped off her.

She went invisible and intangible—a useful trick I didn’t have. I could only put my arms over my head and take a deep breath as something resembling a flash flood dumped off the building, fragmenting into a hard rain as it fell. I felt one of my tattoos heat up on my flesh, a protective spell anchored to my back by ink mixed with dragon blood. A shell of shimmering red enveloped me, extending talons of energy deep into the bricks under me. The activation caused pain I wouldn’t have felt if I were a dragon, instead of a human using dragon magic. My skin burned as if caressed by dragon flame. Choking on a scream, teeth gritted, I took no real damage, but had to look at my body to convince myself I wasn’t charring away to ashes,

Passing by, a wall of water crashed against me. I wasn’t moved. I didn’t even feel it.

Down below on the street, Hiro’s family and servants weren’t so lucky; milling in indecision, waiting for someone higher in the clan to tell them what to do, they were swept out into the main street where fishtailing vehicles plowed into them. The rain was gone, but Hiro and the girls fell off the ladder. Fortunately, enough of their people had fallen under them to provide a half-way soft landing.

Oddly, I noticed that no meat-puppets had been swept off the rooftops. Old Man must have opened a demon vortex to get rid of the corpses. Ha
rd to prove
mass murder
without
bodies. He’d probably also call in a cleaning crew from the sorcerer’s guild to remove blood splatter and inconvenient memories from the witnesses. There was an iron rule that all preternaturals—PNs—could do as they liked, as long as the supernatural community weren’t exposed to a paparazzi feeding frenzy.
Those
guys were scary.

On a one to one basis, humans were weak, not counting me of course, if I still qualified for human that is. But there were billions of humans on the planet. United by fear, armed with modern weapons, roused to violence, mankind could break our rule from the shadows, reclaiming the top spot in the food chain.

All this flashed through my head as the red glow around me dissipated, and I was free to walk over and help the girls to their feet. Hiro was on his own; I didn’t want to get in trouble by moving him if he’d accidentally broken a hip.

I walked the girls to the corner where several washed away relatives shouted in Japanese, reaching out for our assistance in untangling themselves from each other. They sounded hysterical with fear. I laughed at them, hurrying my charges on by. Something about my smile must have been the final straw. Several women fainted, slumping on the ground like drowned rats.

“Odd,” I said. “I usually only have that effect on woman after I’ve fuc—”

I paused, watching a woman who stood in the mouth of the alley. She studied the scene of chaos, a tiny smile on her lips, intrigue playing in her eyes. She wore a scarlet, wide brimmed hat that matched her lipstick. A clunky looking antique necklace hung around her neck. Her dress was black with a red leather belt. She wore red leggings that ended in cuff style, black boot.

Nice figure
.

It seemed to me that a faint wisp of magic blew toward me from her, but the air was so fouled with occult energies I couldn’t be sure. My hand eased inside my jacket, as I reached for one of my PKKs. This could well be the succubus in human form, gloating over her work, coming directly for Haruka now.

“Caine!” It was Hiro, calling from the back of the alley. “What is happening, where are you going?”

“Where
are
we going?” Haruka asked.

I pushed her behind me with my free hand while the other emerged with my handgun. In the split-second I’d looked away, the stranger vanished.

I activated a tat along my spine. Briefly, red-hot needles pricked me all over, the price I paid for mystic awareness. Yeah, the hot chick really was gone; an evil, bile-green glow on the pavement indicated a transportation spell had whisked her away. I holstered my weapon as Haruka came around me.