Demon Marked (38 page)

They would take a report, get a police task force down here within a half hour, and—

The scream came again, higher and even more terrified. “And they'll be too late,” Sam said, setting a swift pace toward the sound before she could second-guess herself. She tripped twice on the uneven pavement before she reached the first bend in the path, and the smell actually seemed to be growing fainter as she walked, but she didn't think of turning back.

She was the only one who could save this woman. Hell, she might be the only one who could even
hear
her. Whether it was simply that her ears functioned better than an average person's because she was missing one of her other senses, or something more paranormal in nature, Sam had always heard things other people missed.

Like the sound of something breathing nearby. Something big.
Really
big.

Heart thudding in her throat, Sam edged closer to the crumbling buildings on her right, moving into the darkest shadows, where most people would never think to look. Her gut told her that, whatever she'd heard, it wasn't human, but getting out of the middle of the path couldn't hurt.

There were human predators here as well. Several of the most violent city gangs called the ruins home. With crime in New York at an all-time high, everything below Fourteenth Street was low-priority to the metro police once typical tourist hours were over. They assumed the freaks who chose to live next door to demon nests deserved what they got, including a bunch of thugs for neighbors.

No one seemed to remember that the prices the government had offered people for their homes in the wake of the infestation hadn't been enough to pay for the moving trucks out of Manhattan. A lot of the families had been stuck where they were, figuring a home next to demons was better than no home at all.

And, in the beginning, they'd all expected the government to
do
something about the infested wreckage.

But demons were as ancient as cockroaches and just as hard to get rid of. Then there was the matter of demon tourism. In a global economy ravaged by the recession of the early part of the century, anything that brought money into the city was considered a good thing. Eventually, government officials had stopped trying to eradicate the demon habitat, settling for a half-assed kind of population control accomplished largely by freelance bounty hunters who flocked to the city to hunt amid the ruins.

Bounty hunters who were often just as dangerous as the creatures they hunted.

Whoever or whatever was watching her, its breath slowly getting swift and shallow with excitement, it wasn't a good thing. It was a bad thing. A
very
bad thing, and that very bad thing was ready to pounce upon the prey it had spotted in the shadows. It was simply waiting for the right moment, enjoying the fear it could feel rolling from its victim.

Sam tasted the mocha she'd made just before leaving the shop and swallowed hard. Now wasn't the time to lose control of her stomach. She could do that later, bent over the cool bowl in her cozy apartment, worshiping the porcelain god the way she had on her eighteenth birthday, when her brother had finally allowed her to order anything she wanted from his bar.

God, Stephen was going to go crazy when he found out she'd been wandering around here by herself, acting like some drunk tourist who wanted to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. He'd warned her a thousand times not to go within fifty feet of the ruins. He was going to kill her for getting killed like this.

The thought was almost enough to make Sam laugh, even though the giant, breathing thing was so close she could taste it. Fire and sulfur and the hint of some exotic fruit, mixed with the unmistakable smell of demon waste. It was definitely a demon, but not the one she'd smelled before. The scent from her dream was gone, vanished along with the sound of the woman's screams.

Whoever she'd heard, the woman was probably already dead. And now, because she was a stupid blind girl who thought she could play the hero, she was going to die, too.

“But I'm going to hurt you first,” she whispered to the thing in front of her as she thumbed open the secret compartment on her cane, flicking the switch that turned the red-tipped end deadly.

Switchblades were illegal in the city, so she assumed switchcanes weren't something the police would approve of—especially when the woman wielding the knife couldn't see where she was aiming her deadly weapon—but abiding by the letter of the law wasn't a priority for most Southies. Sam wasn't any different. Being blind didn't automatically mean she was a law-abiding citizen or helpless or sweet.

Or willing to wait for someone else to make the first move.

“Come and get me already,” she yelled, lifting her cane and lunging forward, aiming a few inches below where it seemed the breath was coming from.

An outraged squeal echoed off the bricks, but there wasn't time to celebrate her hit. Seconds later, her cane was ripped from her hands and the smell of fruit got even stronger as something whizzed by her face.
Shit!
She'd heard of demons that shot poison quills into their prey to immobilize them before they began to feed. They were alleged to be relatively small for demons, but size didn't matter when you were passed out cold on the ground and the thing coming for you had sharp teeth and claws.

Sam ducked and felt the air stir above her head. So far, she'd been lucky, but she could avoid a hit for only so long. She had to put some distance between her and the demon before it was too late.

Whirling around with her hands held out in front of her, Sam started to run, praying she remembered the obstacles she'd encountered on the way in well enough to avoid them. Without her cane, she had no way of “seeing” the ground in front of her before she stepped, no way of—

She cursed as she tripped over something round and hard and fell to the ground, the whizzing needles of the demon that hunted her pinging against the concrete near her scraped hands. On instinct, Sam curled into a fetal position, her body still trying to protect itself though her mind knew this was it. She was down, and the thing behind her was coming, and this time there would be no escape.

All of sudden she was six years old again, bound and tied and waiting for the invisible demons the cult had summoned to take what her parents had invited them to take, to steal what they needed to steal. But this time, it wouldn't just be her eyes. This time, it would be her life.

ALSO BY ANNA J. EVANS