Demon Squad 6 The Best of Enemies (11 page)

“Stop it,” Scarlett growled, “both of you.” Katon sneered but he held his tongue.

I’m not that well trained. “Seems like Wings has had enough.”

“I have, Frank. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re acting strange…even for you. What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, for the first time in Goddamn who knows how long,” I answered, enjoying seeing her purse her lips like she’d swallowed a lemon. “I’m finally living up to my potential. Isn’t that what everyone wanted from me?” My gaze shifted to Katon.

He shook his head. “Abraham would be disappointed in you, Frank.”

The words were a slap in the face. Before I’d even realized it, I had closed the distance and had slammed Katon to the ground, my forearm pinned across his neck, my fist pulled back.

“Don’t ever say that to me again,” I told him as he growled, trying to throw me off. “Keep Abe’s name out of your mouth or I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.”

Scarlett yanked me back, and I let her after a moment of quiet resistance. Katon hopped to his feet, and as he had always been, he was ready to fight. That was one thing I’d always respected about him; there was no quit in the enforcer, but that was also something I knew might one day get between us. That day had come.

When you were an enemy of DRAC—of Katon—you could count on one thing: you needed to kill him or he would never stop coming for you. That’s where we were then. He couldn’t truly understand why I’d taken Mihheer, why I’d killed the bastard—well, Longinus had done the dirty work but there was no washing my hands of it. Now, face to face with Katon, having chosen Longinus and Karra over DRAC, there was no going back. We’d pissed in our beds, and now we were gonna have to wallow in the funk.

Scarlett hovered close, knowing all it would take was an errant word to set us off. “You two have never been at each other’s throats like this, not even at the beginning. Why now?” Her gaze shifted back and forth between us.

“Ask Sparkles over there.”

“Damn it, Frank, that’s what I’m talking about,” she shouted. “You’ve always been an asshole but this…” she pointed at me, “isn’t you.”

“It’s the new and improved me, Cuz.”

“Hope you saved the receipt because you need to take
you
back.” Katon laughed, showing his eyeteeth. “That shit’s defective.”

Scarlett turned on him before I could respond, glaring. He huffed and went silent. “We have better things to do than sit here arguing.”

“Do we?” I asked, my senses drifting through the cemetery gardens. I picked up the vague sense of a human presence—probably the night guy, Marvin—but that was it.

Veronica’s note had said there’d been no evidence of movement of any kind at the cemetery, above ground or below, so if anyone was gonna show up, they were looking to make a grand entrance. Reminded of my first encounter with DRAC, I willed a shield up around my head so I didn’t have to worry about having my teeth picked by a high caliber bullet.

Katon shifted into combat stance the instant my magic welled up. “You sense something?”

Content to let him stew a little, I kept quiet.

Scarlett ruined it by shaking her head. “No one out here but the groundskeeper.”

I smiled. “Just being cautious.”

“If you’re suddenly motivated to be worried, you might cast your eyes upward then,” Scarlett told me with a grunt. “You keep flashing your magic and playing around with that weird portal and you’re going to have Metatron or Uriel knocking at your door.”

“Tell them to stop by. We’ll have lunch.”

Scarlett growled. “You’re clearly insane, you know that, right?”

“If I
were
crazy, would I really know?”

“There are two people here to back that opinion up,” Katon said.

I winked at him because I knew it pissed him off. “Opinions are like assholes…”

“Opinion must be your middle name then, huh?”

“I see we’re still doing this.” The essence of Rahim’s presence washed over as I heard the words, the wizard teleporting in.

I shrugged. “A boy’s gotta have a hobby.”

Rahim didn’t waste more than a second of his attention on me before he looked out across the cemetery. “Seeing how it’s a minute after three and this place isn’t being razed to the ground, I suspect Veronica’s information isn’t as accurate as we’d like.”

He’d always hated my relationship with Veronica, having understood what she was when I was too blinded by the depth of her throat and her ability to hum across eight octaves. She could have handed him physical proof that Baalth ordered the Kennedy assassination and he’d still doubt her. That said, he would never understand her compliance when it came to power. The old Frank might not have had her squirming around all tickly-feely, but the new model was something she couldn’t resist. It was a weird thing how submissive succubi would be when faced with real power. Independent and domineering with pretty much everyone they ran across, all it took was a show of force to get Veronica to heel. Rahim couldn’t know how tight my leash on her was, but she couldn’t fart without asking please.

“No, she was pretty much dead on,” I answered. “She reconned the area and hadn’t spotted anyone. I thought Hobbs might make a splashy arrival, but it doesn’t look that way.”

“I wonder why he brought you here.” The words were barely out of Scarlett’s mouth when a massive explosion rumbled through the night.

We all spun, staring off at the growing fireball that brightened the distant sky, just the other side of downtown.

I pointed. “Maybe that has something to do with it.” Some days you don’t need your Captain Obvious cape to be super.

~

After a few moments of colorful cursing as he plotted distance, Rahim teleported us across town, popping us in a short distance from where the explosion had occurred. We appeared on a dark rooftop located about a block away from the conflagration. It provided us a clear view of what had gone up in flame.

It was the city’s electrical plant.

Well, technically, it was
one
of three. The primary plant for the area fed electricity to the eastern portion of El Paseo, powering the vast majority of the city while an outdated old plant was held in reserve in cases where the other two plants faltered. I wasn’t even sure that last one was still on line. This particular one, however, was the sole source of energy for most of downtown and the whole of Old Town.

“This was done on purpose,” Katon whispered.

“You think?” The question was, why?

He rounded on me, Rahim shifting to keep space between us. “I’ve had enough of your mouth, Frank.” His voice was a raspy snarl. “This isn’t some game where you power up and leave the old levels behind. The old rules still apply, even to you.”

“And what rules are those?”

Rahim tried to calm the enforcer but Katon wouldn’t be stopped. “No, he needs to hear this.” His gaze slammed into mine. “The mission hasn’t changed, Frank, even with Abraham gone. DRAC still stands against the bad guys.” He inched forward, pressing Rahim for space, his index finger in my face. “There are only two camps: wrong and right. You don’t get to skirt the line. If you’re looking to take Baalth’s place or you’re angling to live up to
Daddy’s
inheritance, you’re an enemy. Simple as that.”

“How black and white of you, no offense intended.” I smacked his hand out of my face and Rahim muscled him backward, but I didn’t bother to follow, my attention drawn to the explosion.

Fires trucks swarmed the scene, hoses spewing tons of water across the burning generators and slagged electrical towers. The place looked as if it had been nuked. We could feel the heat from where we were standing, the air thick with the stink of burnt rubber and melted copper. Even the outer fence has been brought down, chain links warped and melted into the asphalt, but there was no doubt the blast had been a focused one. Outside of a few dark scorch marks that scarred the area beyond the fallen fence, there was no damage to the surrounding neighborhood. It had all been contained to the power plant. Well, except for the lack of power. The night was dark all the way into Mexico.

“This was magic,” Scarlett said, staring out across the burning wreckage.

Rahim nodded in agreement. I saw his head bobbing at the edge of my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t draw my eyes from the fire. There was something familiar about it, like the energy from the portal, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. What the hell would be familiar about an explosion?

Katon didn’t give me time to think about it. “You enjoying yourself, Frank?”

I shook off the spell of the dancing flames and turned to look at the enforcer. A smirk peeled his upper lip back.

“I don’t know what’s running through your thick skull, but the look on your face makes me think you might need a change of underwear.”

It took me a second to catch his meaning, my cheeks warming when I did. “You think I’m getting off on this?”

“Sure looks like it.”

“Katon…” Rahim sighed.

“Look at him and tell me he doesn’t look happy about this. He’s even smiling, for fuck’s sake.”

All eyes drifted my direction, and to my own surprise, despite the fury I could feel searing the inside of my face, he was right. A weird, crooked smile had taken control of my lips. I wiped it away fast but there was no mistaking it was there. “I…I—” Steam licked at my eyes, rage and confusion settling into a miasma of uncertainty.

“Stuff it, Frank. There’s something you’re not telling us.” Katon darted past Rahim, a gleam of silver in the lead. The edge of his sword—the one that had been Karra’s—pressed tight against my throat, the blade shifting enough to draw blood. My magic reared up in response. “Tell us what’s going on.”

Before I could even think about it, my hand clasped the blade and pulled it from my neck, the force and speed twisting Katon’s arm around. As soon as the sword was away, I turned and tossed the enforcer aside as though he were a child. Katon slammed into the stair housing, the tiny hut collapsing with the impact. Bricks and pieces of gray mortar toppled over him, burying him in the ruin. His arm jutted limply through the debris.

“The poison doesn’t work on me,” I told the pile of rubble as Scarlett shouted Katon’s name and dug to free him. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, having been paralyzed by the chemicals on the blade before, but there was no doubt in my head. He’d been trying to subdue me, but I felt the poison the instant it touched my blood, and then it was gone, the tingling sting wiped out in an instant.

The how didn’t really matter though, as I had more pressing matters. In my face was a giant werebear, his dark fur blocking my view of Katon and my cousin. My gaze drifted up the blue-black mountain of muscle to the stunted, snarling bear face that somehow managed to mimic Rahim’s human almost perfectly. There was no mistaking the anger that gleamed in his reddened eyes.

To my surprise, I wasn’t frightened.

I’d spent my entire time in DRAC fearing the powers of Rahim and Katon, their ferocity a match for anyone’s, but there was none of that right then. All I saw was the wizard putting on a Halloween costume to intimidate me. It wasn’t happening.

My neck at a weird angle, it was annoying me that I couldn’t look Rahim in the eyes, and then all of a sudden I found myself drifting off the ground, rising slowly until I hovered directly in line with Rahim’s snarling bear face. A smirk hit my lips.

“If you’ve hurt him, Frank—” he let the rest of the threat die deep in his rumbling throat.

I wiped the blood from my neck and flicked it aside, the wound miraculously already healing despite the magical nature of it. There was no mistaking the point that Katon had come at me first.

“The big bad bear act isn’t working, Rahim,” I told him. “Keep your enforcer in check so I don’t have to smack his nose again.”

His teeth glistened as his snout peeled back. “It’s not him you have to worry about if you keep this up.”

I met his grin with one of my own. “From where I’m floating, that sounds like a threat.”

Rahim rose up so he was just an inch or two higher than me, his feral eyes emanating warmth. “This power you’ve gained has gone to your head, Frank, but make no mistake, Katon was right. The very last thing we need is another Lucifer in the world. Those days are long past.” He let out a slow, heavy breath. “Don’t try to bring them back.”

The warning was clear. And though I could honestly admit to not being afraid of Rahim, a voice deep down inside me—something I’d like to think of as an oft-absent sense of reason—told me not to push it any further. Rahim might not have the power I had, but he’d been around a long time and knew way more about his magic than I did mine. I couldn’t bluster and blow him off. He was dangerous, no doubt about it.

I glanced over his furry shoulder to see Katon emerge from the wreckage, Scarlett pulling him free. He didn’t look bad, but he was gonna need to visit a plastic surgeon to scrape the remnants of his pride from his face. I looked back to Rahim. We’d each proven our points and there wasn’t anything left to say. We knew where we stood.

I spun on my heels and leapt off the edge of the building, the darkness swallowing me as I dropped into the alleyway below.

Eleven

“You always were a charmer, Frankie.”

The words drifted out of the shadows, stopping me cold. My heart thumped against my rib cage, threatening to burst loose as I spun about. It had been months since I’d heard her voice last but there was no mistaking it for anyone else’s. It was Karra. She leaned against a nearby wall, and I thought my head might implode at seeing her. As it was, my eyes misted against my wishes, and I sniffed to quell their revolt.

It had been so long, all I could do was stare.

Though she would never be able to disguise her true nature—a necromantic badass—there was a sense of domesticity about her that I’d never seen before. Gone was the tight black outfit and roach-stomper boots, her normal couture of weapons missing. Instead, she wore black slip ons that led up bare legs to a short black dress with a white skull sequined onto her chest, a pink bow in its non-existent hair. Right below its smiling face was the slight swell of her belly. Our baby. A lump threatened to choke me at seeing it. I took a hesitant step forward but she remained where she was.