Chaos Rises: A Veil World Urban Fantasy (4 page)

“Where is it?” My voice still gave away little of my inner turmoil, but he wasn’t looking at me with human eyes. He’d smell the desire on me, feel the needy reach of my element. I couldn’t stop my response anymore than I could stop my heart from beating.

A smile started at the corners of his lips. “A mortal dwelling. Connie has the address. As you are a half blood, you may enter the residence without an invitation. Me and my ilk would find it considerably more difficult.”

Full blood elemental demons couldn’t enter personal dwellings. Demons are beings of chaos, and most human homes fend off chaos like an anathema. His admission answered one question, at least. Why he was sending me. “What am I looking for?”

“A human trinket like those you collect. The
coronam
has been hidden inside an ornament of some kind. You’ll feel it when you’re close. Find it, and bring it to me.”

I was about to do some breaking and entering. I closed my hand tighter around the injector, already wishing I was back in my room so I could take the hit and stop
feeling
like I wanted to roll around in Allard’s scent. Damn it. I hated, hated, hated when my demon started to slip free. How had Del deliberately missed his hits and hidden his mistake from me?

“I do this, and you find Del?”

Allard’s smile grew into an honest, inviting curve of the lips. “He’ll be found soon enough.”

“Okay.” We both knew I wasn’t about to say no, given where I stood, surrounded by Allard’s power, hemmed in by his demons, and buried in his world with Allard as my only means of getting medication. If I wanted to survive, I
couldn’t
say no, and the smile on his face told me he knew it.

A
ccording
to some old realtor details I’d found using my out-of-the-box cell phone to Google the address, 211 Pacific Street was a single-family two-bedroom recently renovated home. Pre-Fall, it would have commanded a multi-million dollar price tag, but unfortunately for the new owners, when the veil closed, it left behind a nw-zone right at the end of their street. Demons as neighbors wreaked havoc on property prices, even if they rarely ventured outside their zone.

I did a causal wander by in daylight. All kinds of cars were parked along the street, fast ones, compact ones—they all looked the same to me—and some kind of sporty superbike. A mix of tastes, like the houses themselves. Some homes crowded close to the road, while others, like 211 sat back, hiding behind, of all things, a white picket fence. A couple of the houses had forlorn-looking boarded-up windows, and I wondered if their owners had died during the Fall, or if they’d moved out of the city to avoid the memories of the war that had raged for a week but had forever changed our world.

I strolled around the block a few times, waiting for the sun to set. Now that I had PC34A smoothing out the jitters, things seemed a little simpler. All I had to do was hop over the fence, break in, grab the artifact, and get it back to Allard. Easy. If things got hairy with any occupants, I’d run into the nw-zone. Nobody could follow me in there.

I had no intention of hurting anyone. The people who lived here probably didn’t even know they owned a demon artifact. They might even give it to me if I told them it was demon.

The setting sun bled across the skies, and crickets had started up their nightly chorus. The warm air hung still. No
sasori
demon rattles from the bushes here.

I strolled on toward 211, checked both ways for bystanders, and finding it clear, hopped over the fence to land in a crouch. A few gnarled trees provided some convenient shadows along the side of the house.

Lights blazed from inside, but I hadn’t seen any movement. I listened hard, drawing on my acute demon hearing to place any sign of occupation. Maybe the lights were on a timer, and the house was vacant. I could hope. Slipping around the back, I eased a dagger free and tried the back door, expecting to have to jimmy the lock open, but it popped open—unlocked.

Slowly, I eased the door open an inch and paused, listening again. A hissing fizzed the air, like a detuned radio or a
sasori
demon. It could be the latter. Lessers
could
infiltrate human homes, unlike their higher demon kin, but they usually shied away from people unless they were starving and disoriented, which was most of them this side of the Veil.

I smelled a warm, rich odor and tried to place where I’d smelled it before…on the clothes of the lab assistants. We’d asked them about the odor, and they’d brought us a hot, black drink to taste. Coffee. I’d hated it. Del had dumped five spoons full of sugar in his and said, only then, was it passable.

Don’t think about Del.

The hissing persisted from the back of the house. I couldn’t place the source, but it wasn’t moving, and the pitch was constant, so I could assume it wasn’t demon.

I crept inside. The kitchen, where I’d entered, was spotless and equipped with all kinds of smooth, shiny gadgets. I had no idea what many of the electronic boxes did.
Big boxes with flashing buttons, boxes under the counters with more flashing buttons.

Daggers palmed, I paused and reached out a little of my elemental touch, just enough to feel where the demonic artifact was. I frowned, feeling two demon sources, one a brilliant flare of power, the other a slow, needy throbbing. Two? Allard hadn’t said anything about two sources.

I wasn’t about to go back and ask him.
Better to get this done and over with.
Following the throbbing source, I slunk along a hall and into the front room. Whoever lived here clearly had taste. Hardwood flooring had been polished to within an inch of its life while high ceilings and sliding doors gave the place a lovely, wide-open feel.

I spotted a coat tossed over the arm of the couch. Someone
was
home.

On the mantelpiece, above the wood-burning fireplace, sat a vase. It didn’t look like much. The paint was chipped, and the decorative flowers were clearly some sort of artistic statement, but the messy design looked like something I’d paint. A dull throb beat the air around the vase. Definitely the
coronam
.

The hissing stopped.

A quiet so thick it was almost netherworldy rushed in.

Grab the vase. Run.

I reached out my left hand, my right still holding the dagger, when a tiny hissing blur snagged my gaze. I ducked. The arrow kissed my face and twanged into the wall somewhere behind me.

“Hey!” a man barked.

I snatched the vase, spun, and ran

My element twitched. Something smooth and cool but intangible reached out, coiling around my legs. Not a man then.
Demon
. But how? This was a home… I heard the
chink
of a mechanism and veered back down the hallway. A second arrow sang, sliced through my top, and bit into my arm. The sudden snap of pain tripped my stride, but the rush of adrenaline easily overrode it.
No time to hurt.

My demon shifted, reminding me of her presence. I took the hint, yanked on any cool spots nearby—I found one in the kitchen—and pooled power into my hand, shaping five ice-shards. After a single glance over my shoulder, I shifted the vase to the crook of my right arm and flung the shards before I could really process what I was seeing. The man—demon—stood in the doorway, naked, apart from a towel clutched around his waist. He aimed a crossbow at my back. His element flared in his eyes, hypnotic and enthralling.
Deadly.

He ducked out of sight a fraction of a second before my brittle ice-shards peppered the doorframe behind where his head had been moments before.

“That’s my vase!” He managed to sound equal parts angry and incredulous.

A crazy grin burst across my face as I made it to the kitchen and out the back door. He might be a demon, but there was no way he’d follow me into the nw-zone wearing just a towel and carrying only that little crossbow to protect him.

A few more strides, over the fence—

He came out of the garden to my left, running fast, a blur, his element surging in a heavy, cresting wave. I swung low with the dagger, but I still clutched the vase in my right hand, and the strike went wide. He jumped back, swung the crossbow around, and aimed it between my eyes. I froze, my gaze full of steel-tipped arrows.

“That’s my vase,” he said again, but this time, he laced it with a real threat. His eyes blazed with a strange combination of cool blue and flickers of sparkling green. At his neck, he wore a battered old cross pendant on a leather cord—no, not a cross, a stylized key made to resemble wings. I followed the trail of muscle down his chest, past several old and faded raking scars, down the tantalizing V of muscle where he clutched the towel. His element trickled about me, tentatively licking at mine. Both of us held back, me because I had PC34A clamped around my control, but he held back because he could. My demon touch recoiled warily from his.

I clutched the vase tighter against my side and switched the dagger to my left hand. He wasn’t going to shoot me, or he’d have done it already.

“You should really give that back.” That threat was still there, bubbling below his deep voice. Not quite a growl, but close. His dark, wet hair licked at his cheeks and over his eyes, long enough to get a good grip on in a fight, but short enough not to obscure his vision.

Heat throbbed down my arm where his earlier arrow had cut me. The thrill of the chase buzzed through my veins, and my demon strained against my control. He was intriguing, this one. I’d never known a demon to be modest before. My eyes flicked back to the towel.

He slowly lowered the crossbow, his arm muscles still rigid with tension. “I don’t want to shoot you—”

I tensed, maybe to run, maybe to act on the thoughts in my head that told me to draw on the ice again and run him through, but he got there first and fired. The arrow punched through my shoulder, slamming me back into the fence, pinning me. Agony flared hot, bright, and unforgiving.

I would not scream—I would not—not for mere physical pain. I’d heal.

The demon clamped his fingers around the arrow and gave it a sideways twist. I whimpered and gulped down the cry.
Bastard
.

He tossed the crossbow aside and leaned in close, narrowing his eyes as he tried to peer into my gaze. Moisture beaded along his golden shoulders and glistened in his hair. I gritted my teeth against the pain and fought not to look away. You don’t look away from a demon challenge—ever. If I looked away, he’d likely tear out my throat. I glared right back.

Still holding his towel with one hand, he used the other to tug on the vase. I clung on. He tugged harder until the pain in my shoulder burned so fiercely I had no choice but to give up the vase.

He stepped back, shifting the vase under into the crook of his arm and gave me a puzzled once-over look. Then he turned away, scooped up the crossbow, and strode back toward his house. Light spilled down his back over a ragged river of scars that hurt to see. He disappeared behind a shrub. I heard a door click closed.

He’d left me skewered to his fence.

Son of a demon!

I couldn’t go back to Allard, not bleeding and empty handed. I wasn’t leaving without that vase.

I tucked the dagger away and wrapped trembling fingers around the arrow sticking out of my shoulder.
Okay, after three… One…
I yanked. The arrow didn’t budge. Teeth gritted, I squeezed my eyes closed, braced my boots against the ground, and heaved my body forward, dragging the arrow all the way through the wound until it sprang free behind me. Sparks of pain twitched through my nerves. I staggered and fell to my knees. Nausea pooled saliva in my mouth. I spat. My empty stomach dry-heaved, my body clearly telling me it had had enough.

All that mattered was the mission. Get the vase.

The demon could have killed me by way of an arrow to the forehead, but he hadn’t. That was his mistake. I had no such hang ups. He was demon. I was designed from the DNA up to kill demons. He had no idea who he was dealing with.

“On your knees on the first date?”

I lifted my head, blinking cold sweat out of my eyes. He leaned against the frame of his sliding doors, now dressed in tired blue jeans and a black snug-fitting V-neck tee. The nonchalance was an act. His element teased around him. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it—angry and insistent. He wasn’t happy, but his fake smile said otherwise.

Demons. So good at pretending.

“Do you speak?” he asked.

I gingerly worked my body to its feet, wincing as something in my shoulder crunched.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Screw you.”

His lips twitched. “So it does speak.”

It!
I hovered my hand over my dagger. His gaze dipped, following the movement, but he didn’t move. I couldn’t see any sign of the crossbow, but he’d have it nearby. Maybe he felt safe in his home. He shouldn’t.

“Yah know, I should be the one who’s angry. You broke into my house and stole from me.”

“I need that vase,” I snarled, loosening more of a growl than I’d meant to.

“I figured that part out for myself.”

“It’s just a vase. Give it to me.”

He pushed off the doorframe and started forward. “You need to work on your social skills.” With every step, his element lapped ahead. It touched mine, a cool, cleansing balm. I hissed in through my teeth instead of recoiling the way I wanted to.

He held out his hand. “Give me your knife, and I’ll see about letting you inside.”

He stood close. Too close. I flicked the dagger free.

“Steady now.” He stilled. He flicked his fingers toward his palm, urging me to hand over the blade.

I lunged. He blocked my strike and thrust his forearm up under mine, leaving me wide open for the punch to the gut. I crumpled over it, wrapping myself around the pain, but landed my own left hook in his side—my punch tipped with jagged ice. He let out a sharp cry and twisted away. I had him on his back foot.
Never give them room to retaliate. Hit hard. Hit fast. Never back down. Demons sense weakness. Go for the kill every time.
With Del’s words lending me their usual strength, I leapt at the demon’s back, hooked my weakened right arm around his neck, and pressed a blade of ice against his throat. “Give me the vase!”

He spat a curse, whirled and groped behind him, trying to grab at me, but I was clamped on fast. His fingers hooked into my hair, pulled, and I dug the blade into his throat that little bit deeper. He stilled.

“Don’t fight me, demon,” I snarled. “Give me what I want.”

His element flared, rolled up from beneath us, and washed up my back in one sensuous wave. Power, rich and heady, wove around me. It was delicious until it wasn’t, until something cool and wet bubbled up my throat. I gagged, tried to breathe, and swallowed the alien substance. My vision blurred, colors swirling into a mix of madness.
What the hell?
More of the liquid surged up my throat and dribbled from my lips.

The demon used the distraction to tear me from his back and fling me down. My back crunched against the ground, followed by my head, but it all seemed so far away. I clawed at my throat, gurgled, and heaved, but still the liquid bubbled over my lips.

He stepped over me, pinned me down, and clamped a hand around my throat. His eyes were as turquoise as the Pacific under a brilliant blue sky, and right now, they were all I knew.
I could fall into those eyes.

“The human body is sixty percent water.” Iridescent colors swirled beneath his cheek, shining like the inside of a shell. “Remember that the next time you decide to test me.”

I’m drowning. He’s drowning me… I…

I beat hopelessly against his chest, pushed and punched, but the weakness dragged me away, and finally, blissfully, the pounding silence swallowed me whole.