Demon Driven (22 page)

The general paused for a moment, then
spoke.

“Well sheeeeit! Agents! At ease!”

I heard the observation door open and then
the door to my interrogation room opened. The man who came through
was wearing street clothes, razor-creased khaki’s and a black
turtleneck, but there was no mistaking that he was military. Salt
and pepper buzz-cut hair, ramrod straight posture, and clear grey
eyes that bore right into you. He was lean and whipcord tough, the
endurance build of a Special Forces type. About my height but less
muscle mass. Duclair and Roma followed after, each moving to a
different side of the room.

“Gordon, I’m General Tobias Creek, and the
D.O.A.A. is now under my command.”

His right hand shot out to shake mine and
despite my disenchantment with both local and federal law
enforcement leadership, I found myself shaking it in mild
admiration.

“Now, explain!” he ordered.

I took that as a request for illumination of
the overall situation.

“My mate or girlfriend, whichever you prefer,
can track me pretty much anywhere in the city. She probably was
already awake when Duclair threw her little SWAT party, but since
it occurred right outside of Lupine Industries headquarters, I’m
sure she had a phone call or two. She is most likely on her way.
Okwari, on the other hand, is already here.”

“One thing at a time! How can the girl be out
in daylight? She’s only twenty-three.”

“She was born a vampire. The only one ever.
She’s more advanced than pretty much all of them except the Elders,
at least one of whom will undoubtedly be with her,” I said.

“One of the three Elders is coming here?” he
asked, his tone indicating someone was in trouble. My money was on
Duclair.

“One of
two
Elders, Sir. Fedor died
last year. But Senka is Tatiana’s grandmother in a very real sense
of the word, and she will be with her.”

“What happened to Fedor?” he asked.

“He was the last person to kidnap me,” I said
with a glare at Brianna. “Okwari crushed him into paste.”

I really didn’t need to add that detail, but
I was getting a lot of perverse enjoyment out of educating the
general.

“Okwari is the elemental bear thing?” he
asked. Roma started to speak, but General Creek just waved him to
be silent.

“Okwari is my name for him. I’m not really
certain what he is. Twelve thousand years ago, he was the largest
bear on the planet. He became something a great deal more.
Personally, I think he’s the Great Spirit bear that Native
Americans speak of in legends, but I don’t know.”

“He was a pet of the demons?” Creek asked. I
had to give him kudos for the casual way he used ‘demons’.

“He was bound and enslaved about a thousand
years ago, by demons, becoming a Damnedthing. I freed him last year
so he is not damned anymore. He’s extremely ….attached to me. I’m
trying to keep him from destroying the building, but he’s pretty
stubborn about some things. Me being held captive tops the list,” I
said with a shrug.

The general stared at me for a moment, then
turned and pinned Brianna with his glare.

“So to recap, you could have gotten away or
free, but you didn’t want to hurt anyone. Your girlfriend and one
of the most dangerous vampires on the planet are coming here to get
you. A demigod class entity that you freed from a millennium of
slavery is here, now, getting ready to destroy everything in his
path to free you?” he asked, never looking away from Duclair, who
was frozen in place. Roma was white as a sheet.
He
at least,
understood the enormity of what was coming.

“That’s pretty close, sir, although frankly,
I think Tanya is even more dangerous than Senka. And Okwari is
probably a lot more than demigod rank…..” I trailed off as he
turned his glare on me.

“Just saying,” I finished with a shrug. “But
that pretty well covers it … sir!”

I have a lifetime of conditioning to respect
strong leaders, starting with my Gramps, and General Creek
definitely fit the bill.

“Can you stop any of this?” he asked.

“I need my phone to call Tanya. Okwari will
likely settle down as I leave.”

“Give him his phone,” Creek ordered.

I started to place the call, but suddenly, my
‘Tanya’ sense flared. I kept dialing.

“They’re here,” I said as I lifted the phone
to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” I said, “I’m headed out
now.”

The general nodded at my raised eyebrows and
led the way to the elevators, ignoring the stares that we were
getting from the busy agents on the rest of the floor.

“Better be quick!”

She meant that she wouldn’t wait long before
she came for me.

The elevator doors closed as I spoke.

“Listen, wait right there, we’re in the
elevator now.”

“Is Agent Duclair with you?”

I looked at Brianna as I answered.

“Yeah, she’s here!”

“Good, I want to explain some things to
her!”

Then she hung up.

Everyone was looking at me, questions in
their eyes.

“They’re in the lobby, and Tanya wants to
talk to you,” I said directing the last to Duclair. “She’s pretty
unhappy. Actually I don’t think I’ve ever heard that tone in her
voice before.”

Hmm, now I was getting a little worried. I
had hoped for a zero bloodshed outcome.

Chapter 23

The elevator opened into an eerily silent
lobby. The main foyer of the federal building is quite large, in
order to accommodate the metal detector that all visitors must go
through. The design is open, with marble floors and high ceilings.
The two main entrances funnel visitors to the security checkpoint,
which looks just like the airport setups.

Tanya and Senka, as well as, Mr. Deckert,
faced fifteen M4 armed men wearing military digital cammies. Seven
uniformed security personnel watched, eyes wide. None of the
federal people even turned our way. I understood, completely. My
own eyes were locked on Tanya’s from the moment I stepped out. I
hadn’t seen her in five days. The sight of her hit me hard,
emotions flooding me from head to toe. Relief, guilt, love, lust
and the strongest protective urge I’ve ever had. A single word
popped into my head –
Mine!
In that brief nanosecond, the
door was open, the beast was out and I froze, every threat
catalogued, every person on the floor plugged into a combat
schematic in my head. Instantly, I released an aural burst, a
sphere of violet energy visible only to myself and Senka, that
would disable every round of ammunition on the floor.

Creek, Roma and Duclair kept walking, never
noticing the change that had come over me. I knew, with absolute
certainty that I would kill every being in the room that was a
threat to
her.
Part of me noticed that the mono edges had
formed around my hands without my conscious thought, part of me
heard Senka’s whisper across the room “
Extraordinary!”
and
part of me tracked each individual heartbeat and body motion, in
the room. There were fifteen soldiers, two vampires, seven security
officers, one female technician type and Deckert, not to mention
Roma, Duclair, the General, and myself.

Tanya blurred across the floor, much too fast
for the humans to see, but it looked normal to me, stopping
immediately in front of me. Her scent, lilac and jasmine, broke
over me like a wave.

“Christian,” she said, the weight of her
voice wrapping around me.

Just that fast, I was back from the abyss,
mono edges gone, pooled power retracted, berserker caged. It took
the humans a moment to realize one of the vampires was no longer by
the door, but standing two feet from the senior officers.
Professional soldiers are hard to surprise, but these men were
seriously shocked at her speed. Tanya finally released my eyes,
turning her head to pin Duclair with her gaze. Her eyes went black
rim-to-rim, canines lengthened to two inches long, and when she
spoke, it was in a quiet voice that was all the scarier for its
lack of volume.

“If you ever go near
him
again, I will
flay your skin from your body and drink you dry!” she hissed, the
words distorted by the massive teeth in her mouth.

All three instinctively jumped away, Brianna
backed against the wall, her heart racing in terror, handgun
completely forgotten. Just as well, the ammo in it was useless.
Rifles around the room came up and locked on my vampire, grounds
for instant death, but for the fact that there was no viable ammo
anywhere nearby.

Tanya’s eyes slipped back to brilliant blue,
her fangs retracted and she turned to General Creek, holding out
her slim white hand, its nails ruby red.

“General Creek, this is Tatiana Demidova, my
sputnik jetzni
,” I said as he dug deep and found the courage
to shake her hand. Tanya’s head snapped around to look at me, her
eyes widening ever so slightly, mouth sliding into a brilliant
smile. When she turned back to him, still smiling, I heard the
stutter in his heart beat.
Welcome to my world, general.

Senka was suddenly next to us, watching me
and Tanya with a strangely possessive look, and when her gaze slid
to Creek, I took my cue and introduced her.

“General Tobias Creek, this is Senka,,” I
said, “ and Mr. Deckert.” The former marine had walked up almost
unnoticed. General Creek was still at a loss, but when he heard
Deckert’s name, he flicked a quick glance at the stocky security
specialist and nodded in recognition.

The humans were at a complete loss of what to
do. On one hand I could commiserate, meeting the oldest living
predator on the planet is a tad intimidating. But on the other
hand, I couldn’t give a damn. Let ’em wallow.

“General,” Senka said in her wonderful Oxford
English accent. “I’m breaking several rules by speaking with you
today, but seeing as how I made the rules in the first place, I
think we can probably bend them a bit.” Her tone was cool and
utterly confident. “Although I might ask that you do something to
keep the foot traffic down during our little chat.”

Still at a loss for words, Creek tersely
ordered his second-in-command to block the two main entrances and
lock down the elevators.

“Now then, General, I really must ask for
your word, as an officer, that you’ll refrain from any further
abductions of young Christian here. We’re really quite attached to
him. In fact, my granddaughter was perfectly willing to slaughter
the lot of you, but I think we’re most likely past that.”

Her tone was mild up until she got to the
slaughtering part. She might have been admonishing a bad waiter for
all the threat her tone implied, but then it somehow changed. When
she spoke the word slaughter, her tone carried an underlying
message, like some subliminal note that the primitive part of the
human brain recognized from a time when we cowered in caves from
things that roamed the night.

The room smelled of fear, it sounded of over
two dozen thundering hearts as the humans responded.

“I trust that my point is made?” she
asked.

“Ma’am, it’s not my habit to negotiate with
threats!” The general had collected himself enough to stand his
ground. My estimation of his intelligence had just dropped.
Although he was a U.S. general, so I could understand some of his
attitude, but frankly, he obviously didn’t have a great grasp of
what he was dealing with.

“Nonsense, general, the very heart of armed
conflict is dealing with threats. This is just a question of you
understanding the nature of this threat,” she responded. There was
that tone again. I shivered even knowing I was on her good
side.

My attention shifted to a sudden change in
the air currents in the room. Our group was just on the outside of
the checkpoint about fifteen feet from the large embossed
Department of Homeland Security emblem centered in the floor. A
swirl of air had fluttered the papers at the checkpoint and now
spun up into a familiar twister pattern near the emblem.

Tanya was studying me, looking for any wounds
or marks, although those had healed in the first few minutes after
I got them. She noticed my attention and immediately knew what was
happening.

“Is Okwari here?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said, using my Sight to observe the
green, red and purple bands of energy that were rapidly forming a
giant bear shape.

I noticed that the vampire-federal government
talks had stopped and all the participants were now looking at me.
I waived at the spot where I could see Okwari.

“You might need to table your discussion,” I
informed them.

Senka could see him, I was certain, her eyes
were bright with first interest, than astonishment as he reached
his full size. No one else could see him, though, and they all
looked confused.

”Chris, you said he wouldn’t appear if we got
you out in time?” Roma questioned.

“I said he ‘probably’ wouldn’t appear. He has
his own ideas.”

Those ideas were streaming through my head in
a series of images and emotions. This is Okwari’s method of speech.
It was much faster than usual and the underlying theme was one of
intense anger.

I was fluent in Okwari’s form of
communication after seven months of it, but this was really fast
and I was still working out his meanings when he started to become
visible.

He can, of course, turn visible as easily as
he stays invisible. But he is at heart a predator, and what
predator doesn’t like to be hidden from view?

There was a rapid exodus from the immediate
area, which left just me and Tanya standing near the giant as he
became fully visible. I rarely see him like this and Tanya has only
seen it one or two times. He is impressive.

Born a short-faced bear on the Pleistocene
plains of western North America, his preferred form is only
slightly different than it was in life. On all fours, his shoulder
is over my head, about six feet, five inches off the ground. His
eyes in this position are at about seven feet. The truck scales at
the NYPD impound yard in Brooklyn, tell me he weighs just a few
pounds shy of one and one-half tons. That makes him twice as heavy
as a really large Kodiak or polar bear. But
Arctodus simus
is built for speed, longer of limb and rangier than modern bears.
His snout is shorter and wider, built to crush bone. His fur is
black and tan, the black on his head and back, running down to a
point on each limb. The fur on his lower half and underside is a
wheat color. The overall effect is as if he had a black Kodiak skin
draped over his skull and back. The only real differences from when
he was just a bear are the two backswept horns that protrude from
his skull. Leftovers from his time as a Damnedthing. His eyes are
deep brown when he is relaxed, red when agitated. Today they were
molten lava red. He was pissed.