Demon Driven (31 page)

* * *

Immediately, I was flipped end over end,
bullets of rain smacking my exposed eyes. I was falling fast, and
at first panic threatened to overwhelm me. A weighty tug on the
chain around my neck righted me into a facedown sky-diver’s fall,
the Tear also lending me determination, even as it straightened my
descent. I focused on Lightening my weight and as my speed slowed,
a cushion of air formed under me. Okwari simultaneously sent an
image of us falling directly toward a massive multi-lane street.
The pull I felt from Tanya matched his image of where we were
headed, although the connection was now flavored with her rage. She
was fighting!

* * *

Normal night vision was useless in the
torrential storm, but my version of thermal vision offered small
details from below. There were few cars on the wide road below, the
storm working to keep people off the streets. A couple of
tractor-trailers passed each other, headed in opposite directions.
Ground was rushing up fast and suddenly, my supportive wind
disappeared from under me, my fall accelerating. I put my arms out
in front of me, hands together in a classic dive pose, but with
mono edges formed over both hands. Aiming straight at the pavement
below I returned to normal weight, letting gravity speed the last
fifty feet or so.

* * *

My plan was to use my mono-edged hands and
momentum to slam through the asphalt, dirt and bricks. My plan
sucked!

I sank elbow deep into the street, slammed to
a halt, flipping over onto my back, smacking my head, shoulders and
spine hard enough to black out for a second or two. Pain and
disorientation disappeared as panic took over and I leaped to my
feet. I had made a mini-crater about a foot deep, but before I
could do more than glance at it, the sound of screeching tires and
a blaring horn interrupted me. Looking up right into the blinding
headlights of an onrushing SUV, I could see the driver’s panicked
expression as he tried to stop.

It was a big vehicle, part of my mind
automatically deciding it was an Escalade, from the Caddy emblem on
the front. Twenty feet from impact, it hit something else,
something really big. The front grille, bumper and hood caved
inward toward the engine and the back wheels came up off the
ground, as it slammed to a halt. I switched to Sight, noting the
giant green, purple and red form of Okwari, his head pointed at me,
not even bothering to pay attention to the machine that had totaled
itself against him.

Below me I sensed Tanya’s rage changing to
exhaustion. The berserker inside smashed free of his cage, just as
car doors slammed and a voice heavy with Brooklyn accent said: “Are
you fucking crazy! Whaat’s the fucking matter wit you!”

My head tilted up, the berserker and I
looking at three brawny-Italian looking guys, whose expressions of
anger flashed over to fear.

“Run!” I said in a voice not my own, just as
Okwari rumbled a warning from his invisible position right in front
of them.

The three changed directions fast, turning
and running back into traffic, where the other oncoming cars were
slowing at the sight of the wrecked Escalade.

My attention turned back to the barrier of
stone and dirt below me, but I was pushed out of position by three
thousand pounds of furry power.

Okwari stood up to his full height, hunched
his massive shoulders forward and brought both trashcan-lid sized
paws down on the ground like a polar bear breaking the ice dome of
a seal’s den.

I’d like to tell you that I loosened it for
him, but anyone who saw the road buckle down into a sudden
depression would know the truth. A five foot wide hole had opened
into a pit of darkness, a gust of damp, moldy air rushing up,
smelling of vampire and wet were, fear and blood. Lots of
blood.

No sooner had Okwari pulled back then I dove
past him into the hell hole below his feet.

Chapter 33

I can’t tell you a lot of detail of my fall
into that pit, but some things managed to get seared into my
memory. My fighter-self was in charge, dropping twenty feet to the
dirt floor of the old tunnel, my body already oriented in the
direction where I sensed Tanya.

We had come through right on top of the
combined Coven and Pack group, twenty-seven all together, according
to my fight brain. The tunnel extended on either side of them,
filled wall to wall with Loki Spawn weres. Wolves, bears and cats
mixed with Spawn in human form and beast-man form, all fighting to
get at the vastly outnumbered vampires and Pack members. Two
hundred, thirteen was the number that popped unbidden into my head.
The fighting had paused for a microsecond as my bear punched
through the ceiling, but was now back in full frenzy.

I had already oriented on Tanya, who was out
on the edge of her group, fighting fifteen weres by herself as
Lydia pulled a wounded Senka back to the slightly more protected
center of the group.

A were bear bit down on my mate’s left arm
and just before his massive teeth crunched shut, my mind detected
the gleam of silver – painted onto his teeth.

From here it gets sketchy. All I can tell you
is that the sight of those brutal teeth closing on my Tanya’s slim
arm broke my sanity and I went nuts.

The first six Spawn in front of me exploded
into shreds as I shot through them, my entire body wreathed with
mono edges, my arms spinning in arcs too fast for even the weres to
see. I went through another ten enemy, like a mower through grass.
Arms, legs, torsos, heads, gun barrels, parts of machete blades all
parted like air as I spun forward.

But as fast as I was going, I still wasn’t to
Tanya as I saw a giant wolfman pull back his silver-clawed arm to
swipe at Tanya’s exposed head. A purple-black bolt of aura from my
right hand completely removed
his
head before he could
swing. The bear still had her arm in his jaws and I
pulled
with my left hand. Most of his brain and part of his spine ripped
clear of his body, shooting across the thirty feet to my hand. I
threw the remains into the face a rushing wolf, then crushed its
skull with a front kick.

Behind me I heard Lydia yell. My internal
heads-up display showed two giant cougars, each the size of a
tiger, feinting at the young guardian, who was doing her best to
protect Tanya’s grandmother. Without conscious thought, a bolt shot
from my hand and speared both cats, one through the chest, the
other through the hips.

Tanya was struggling with five, no, six new
weres. I wasn’t going to make it, not before they killed her. Not
before she was torn apart by silver tipped claws and teeth. Not
before I lost her for good.

Any anger or rage I had ever felt before, at
the loss of my family, at Hellbourne, at Reyes, at poor George
Lassiter, at the forces of my own government, all paled before the
geyser of purple-black fury that exploded from deep inside me. The
Tear on my chest went white hot, I screamed in rage and the world
exploded into violet light.

* * *

The sound of dripping water is the first
thing I can clearly recall. That and the awful smell of burnt hair.
Then the warmth and weight of a slim body held in my lap. My vision
returned just as I realized cool lips were fastened to my right
wrist and a steady pull was suctioning blood from my arm.

She was draped across my lap, her right hand,
bloody and grimed, holding my wrist to her mouth. Both eyes were
closed and I had an immediate flashback to my first meeting with
her.

This time, just as then, her eyes snapped
open, startling me with their glowing blue irises.

I was sitting cross-legged on the ground, my
head bowed over her broken form.

An enormous presence was looming over us
both, but I knew instantly that it was the protective bulk of my
friend.

“Chris?” a voice spoke softly, yet with an
urgent tone.

I lifted my head and saw Lydia facing me from
twenty feet away, Galina, Nika, Arkady, Senka and Tzao arrayed
behind her. Further back, Brock and Afinia watched with me with
wary eyes.

Nika moved up next to Lydia, her gaze locked
on me.

“Chris?” Lydia said again, more urgently.

She was looking at me like someone might
watch a rabid dog, with fear and wariness.

Why would Lydia be afraid of me?

I opened my mouth to speak, but the sentence
in my head failed somewhere between my brain and my mouth.

“Mine!” I stated in challenge.

Lydia’s expression changed to shock and she
involuntarily stepped back half a pace at my utterance.

Nika’s expression didn’t change. “He’s
puzzled by your fear. He’s also having trouble talking. He meant to
say ‘She is mine and I am hers’ but all that came out was ‘Mine!’ ”
the slim mind-reader reported, never taking her eyes from me.

I’ve always thought Nika was just a major
pain in my ass, but I had to admit, she was handy to have around
when my brain and mouth came unwired.

Lydia stepped forward, slowly, her face
firming with resolve.

“Chris, we need to get to Tanya to help her!”
she said.

I cleared my throat and mumbled my way around
a response.

“S-so come on, all-lready!”

Why were they waiting? Where were the Spawn?
What the hell had happened?

Lydia and Nika surged forward at my words,
and after a wave from Lydia, the rest moved up as well.

Okwari woofed once, nudged me with his snout
and then spun out of the tunnel in a swirl of wind. The remaining
vampires and Pack weres looked around wildly, as they felt rather
than saw his departure.

Lydia began to examine Tanya, but Nika kept
her attention on me. I glanced around the tunnel. Not a single
Loki’s Spawn were remained in sight. The tunnel arched up over my
head, reaching about seventeen or eighteen feet, its walls and
ceiling made of brick. The floor was dirt, which was turning into
mud in the center, right under the compact car-sized opening that
Okwari had punched through the curved ceiling. Above, on the
street, I could hear sirens and see flashes of light from cars and
approaching emergency vehicles. Water dripped and ran in through
the opening in mini-torrents.

“Lydia, we are leaving NOW!” Senka said
firmly from fifteen feet away. Most of the other vampires had kept
their distance from me and now were headed toward an opening in the
brick wall that I was pretty sure the normal world was unaware
of.

Tanya released her grip in my arm as Lydia
slipped a needle into her arm, the other end connected to a bag of
O positive blood. Then the tiny vampire scooped up Tanya like she
was weightless and looked at me.

I climbed unsteadily to my feet, suddenly
dizzy. Lydia looked concerned.

“You alright there, North boy?”

“Yeah I’m fine…” I heard myself say as I took
one step, the tunnel spun, then everything went gray.

Chapter 34

I woke from a bad dream. In my nightmare it
had been dark and raining, much like the night before. I had felt
an urgent need to get out of the downpour and so took refuge in a
handy culvert. But the culvert became a grave and the rain changed
to blood, then became filled with chunks of weres, falling on my
head and shoulders. I huddled at the bottom of the grave, staring
at the dirt where the blood puddled and flowed. The tiny rivelet
under my gaze washed away the moldy grave dirt and something white
shown through. More dirt eroded and the white object grew larger
and took on the features of a vampire. My vampire. I dug around her
to get her free, but she began to sink into the earth. Her eyes
flashed opened, then the dirt pulled her below with a squelching,
sucking sound and she was gone.

That was the part where I woke up.

* * *

A cool, powerful hand was squeezing my arm
and I knew instantly that she was alive, wounded yet recovering. I
sat upright and pivoted to look down at her. Tanya’s eyes were
alert and bright as she questioned me with a look, yet her left arm
was bandaged around the elbow and bicep. An IV entered the same
arm, pumping O positive from the bag hung next to the bed.

“Nightmare,” I said, in answer to her
unspoken question. “How are
you
?”

She cleared her throat first. “Alive and
healing…thanks to you!” she said with a smile, weakly.

Checking her over, I found just the one
bandage, the rest of her healed back to perfection.

* * *

Then I looked around the room. It was
obviously a bedroom, decorated in an opulent fashion with very
expensive furnishings. Other than that it looked like a bunker. The
walls were poured concrete, buttressed ceiling massively solid.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Safehouse,” she replied, tapping a small
button next to the bed. A microsecond later the door opened and
Lydia blurred through, followed by Nika, who was carrying a
tray.

I smiled at the spikey-haired vamp and the
beautiful blonde, but my focus zoomed in on the cloth covered tray
the mind reader was carrying. Food! I was suddenly, overwhelmingly
hungry. Starving, famished. Potentially the hungriest I have ever
been.

Nika put the tray down on the little hardwood
table at the foot of the bed and pulled the cloth covering it off
as she backed gracefully away, a small smile on her face.

I was suddenly standing next to the bed, my
entire attention on the tray of food that smelled amazing. Then I
was at the tray, trying to decide what to eat first. There was a
huge bowl of oatmeal, which smelled of butter, blueberries and
brown sugar. A stack of maple syrup (real!) covered pancakes and a
plate of Canadian bacon vied for attention, as did the the bowl of
scrambled eggs.

“Ahem!” Lydia said with a throat clearing
sound.

I glanced up at her, then followed the
direction of her gaze, looking down to discover I was stark naked.
Lydia arched one eyebrow in amusement, the corner of Nika’s mouth
twitched slightly as if she might actually know how to grin. I was
too hungry to care, so I grabbed the whole tray and zipped back
into bed, the food on my lap.