Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords) (26 page)

I felt a pit open in my stomach, a hollow feeling.  What had I lost?

A slim, white hand covered my own, bringing me back to the present.  “We’re all still here.  You’ll get it back. It’ll take time, but I know you will get it back,” she said firmly.

“Can you read my mind?  To know what I’m thinking?” I asked her. 

“Feelings mostly, but I’ve gotten to know you well enough that I can usually interpret what’s driving them.  You do much of the same with me.  Nika, here, is the only true mindreader in our group.”

“You can read minds?” I asked the blonde vampire.  She nodded.  I had my doubts.

“The number four, a mountain under blue sky, a tropical beach complete with coconuts, and all of us in bikinis”, she said suddenly, reading the stream of thoughts I had run through my head as a test.  I was speechless.

“Bikinis?  What colors?” the little goth vamp, Lydia, asked.

“Mine was red, yours and Gina’s black, Tanya’s blue, of course, and
hers
was white,” Nika answered with a nod a Stacia. Which had the unfortunate result of bringing attention back to the wolf girl they all seemed to hate.  Except Gina, who was watching everyone and everything.

“I would know what you left out about the Asheville trip?” Tanya asked Stacia, who looked sullen and angry, just shaking her head without answering.

“She left out something about a witch girl from Michigan.  Erika?  She had some kind of spell on Chris.  Oh!  A love spell?  Had one of his hairs, only he’s resistant to magic, so it didn’t fully take.  Some of the spell transferred to her!” Nika said.

“What?” Tanya came up off her seat, eyes flashing.

“Stay the fuck out of my head!” the weregirl said in almost a growl.  After a tense second, she turned back and explained, “Some teenage witch you two met in Michigan.  She had been casting a love spell on Chris with a hair.  Apparently she’s blonde and he doesn’t respond to magic well.  We figured it out and he removed it.”

“What’s this about transferring to you?  Did you sleep with my Chosen?” Tanya asked in a deadly quiet voice. Stacia didn’t answer, just turned away and folded her arms.  Tanya started to move, but Nika’s voice stopped her.  “No, she didn’t.  She’s the one that figured out there was a problem and found out how he could stop it.”

Tanya went from kill mode to puzzled in a split second.  I was getting whiplash from trying to keep up.

“Explain,” my vampire said. “About this transference.”

Stacia didn’t answer, and everyone sat frozen for a moment. Then she spoke.  “He started to stare at me, a lot, which is unusual for him.  He got flustered if I joked with him, you know in a flirty way.  It wasn’t normal.  Then we found the book and he called the mother witch, Quin or Quincy, or something.”

“Quinby,” Tanya supplied.

“Yeah, Quinby.  Only this Erika answered, almost like she expected him to call.  She was blatantly coming on to him. She knew things he was thinking about,” Stacia said.

“Like reading his mind?” Lydia asked.  Stacia shook her head.  “Like she had planted the image or idea.  I suggested that he left a hair or fingernail behind and then he scanned himself and found a connection to her.  My witch friend told me how he could get rid of it and he did.  End of story.”

“You chose not to take advantage of his misdirected interest?” Gina asked.

“It would be like taking advantage of a drunk guy.  Easy to do but artificial and it would ultimately end badly,” Stacia said, examining her nails.

“Yes… it would have,” Tanya said softly. “But you seem to have honor… and integrity.”

The van stopped, and so did our conversation. The same detective who took us to the Comish opened the back doors.  “Grab a suit and cover up. We want to keep our cover story intact.  You can take them off inside if you prefer.”

We each grabbed a hazmat suit from the assortment hanging on the front wall of the van and climbed into them.  The van’s driver and his partner helped us figure out the complicated connections and hoses.  They were like kids in a candy store with five beautiful women to help.  Me, I just did the best I could.  I made Awasos stay with the van.

The building was old but looked okay from the outside.  A four-story with brick exterior and parking in the back.  The rest of the street looked much the same: smaller, older apartment buildings on a quiet little street.  Further up the road, big white letters were painted on the asphalt indicating a school crossing zone.  Normal stuff.

But the building felt off.  Corrupted, like it was ready to ooze blood and filth.  I started forward and the five women tramped after me, their svelte figures hidden by the spacesuit-like hazmat outfits.  They looked like dumpy little spacemen as we passed the cops and emergency service people posted outside.  That was amusing till I realized they were going with me—into the building—where there were demons.

“Hey, where do you all think you’re going?”

“We all have our necklaces.  We’ll be fine,” Tanya said.

Necklaces?  I waited till we were inside the front door way and out of view of the people outside.  Then I popped my helmet off.  The others followed suit.

A quick scan showed nothing demonic around us, but the creepy vibe had increased tenfold.

“What’s all this about necklaces?” I asked the suit-shucking women.

Lydia kicked her feet free and pulled several necklaces free of her shirt.  Gina, Nika, and Stacia all did the same.  Tanya just unzipped the half zipper on her green performance shirt and pulled it apart enough to show me an unmistakable arrowhead and eagle feather necklace nestled in her cleavage.

Seeing
that
necklace was yet another shock.  I should have been immune by now, but the shocks just kept coming.

I opened my Sight and looked them all over.  Five bubbles of violet surrounded them completely, each sphere a powerful protection from demonkind.

“I gave you those?” I asked. Everyone nodded.  “And you’ve been with me on exorcisms before?”

“Lydia and I have,” Tanya said.

“
I
helped you with the possessed were children
and
closing the Hellgate,” Stacia said, earning herself sharp looks from the vampires and a respectful nod from Gina.

“It’ll be my first,” Gina said. 

“Mine as well,” Nika added.

“Be mindful of attack, especially from behind,” I warned them, as it appeared they were hellbent on coming. “They’ll fling things at you, say stuff to you, mess with your heads, but only if they know where you are.  Those nifty necklaces should hide you as long as you stay quiet.  Watch each other’s backs.”

“What about you?” Gina asked.

“I’m gonna draw their attention… make myself a target,” I answered.  It was the only thing I was certain of, the only part of my life that I was confident I could handle.  I still remembered how to handle demons.  “All right, let’s go.”

Chapter 28

The building was a pit on the inside.  Equal parts slaughterhouse and outhouse, at least according to my nose.  Blood, piss, and feces everywhere.  Smeared on the walls and floors, even bloody handprints on the ceilings.  It was deadly silent, save for the sounds of our careful footsteps and the beating heartbeats of Gina, Stacia, and myself.  The vampires’ hearts were almost silent, even to my uber-hearing.  Just an occasional thump, about one per minute or so.

Gina was scared, her fear scenting the air around us, which could have been a real problem.  Vampires and weres get excited by the scent of fear, their inner predators rising to the prospect of prey.  Somehow, I knew that fact without having any memory of learning it.

But this group became protective rather than predatory.  Gina was one of theirs, and her fear made them angry.  They pushed her into the middle of the group, behind Tanya—who was behind me—and followed by Lydia, then Nika. Even Stacia, who had taken the rearmost position, kept a close eye on her, which seemed odd until I remembered Stacia’s tale of becoming a were.  Gina had been there when she met the New York pack and had smoothed over those oh-so-important introductions.

As we moved deeper into the building, I let my senses expand, feeling rather than seeing.   I felt a pull, downward, toward the basement, so naturally I went up, to the top floor.  The stairwell bore testimony to a running battle, the sheetrock smashed in many places and various makeshift weapons lying about.  An empty fire extinguisher lay on the first landing, one corner of its base crusted with blood.  A broken kitchen knife and a red-stained shard of railing bannister occupied two of the steps leading to the second floor.

Blood smears on the floor and boot prints in the dust showed where the cops had hauled away bodies, rushing to complete the job without regard for crime scene procedure or evidence collection.  Terror scented the air along with an undertone of rage.

Demons are like people in that no two are the same.  Sure, they share common traits, like an insatiable appetite for fear, despair, and terror, but they have distinct personalities.  The one that came for me from the basement was aggressive, hopped up on its recent successes with both the building tenants and driving off the cops and EMS personnel.  It came from behind, rushing up the stairs from below.  I felt its approach long before it got there, long enough to turn and move myself to the back of the line, which, with my absurd speed, took no time at all.  It was projecting evil, using the essence of its own nature as a weapon.

Behind me, I heard Stacia catch her breath, just for a second, while Gina’s heart rate went high enough to be in danger of seizing up completely.  I heard Lydia’s soft voice reassure her human friend but kept my attention focused on the incoming Hellspawn.  Invisible to human eyes, the greasy blob of blackness came swarming up from below, riding an overpowering wave of vile, evil soul rot—which slammed to a halt as it hit my left hand and stuck like a fly on a spider’s web.  Shrieking angrily, it tried to pull itself free while simultaneously pulling projectiles from the floor and throwing them at me.  The extinguisher and knife launched themselves, but both were grabbed in midflight, snagged by the supernaturally quick reflexes of the were girl and telepathic vampire immediately behind me.

That was all the time it got because I tossed it up and called for Kirby.  The reassuring otherworldly bulk of God’s holy raptor flashed into existence, plucking the lump of hellspew from the air and disappearing.

Standing there, breathing the rotten-egg stench of demon, I smiled, absurdly happy at the familiar sighting of the Collector of lost demons.  I smiled at the stunned group of women around me.

“How fucked up is it that I finally feel like something is right in my life?  That the sight of a supernatural ghost bird makes me feel like I’m back from the shadowlands?”

My voice, spoken at normal tones, made Gina jump, just a little.  But my words reached her inner psychologist.   “You’re doing something that you remember well, as unholy strange as it is.  It’s completely familiar to you.  Feeling good about it is normal.  It’s the fact that you’ve been doing it your whole life that’s fucked up,” Gina said. 

The others gaped at her like she’d grown tentacles out her ears.  “You swore!” Lydia said, completely shocked.  “You never swear!”

Gina’s expression was mild exasperation.  She wiped a sheen of sweat from her brow and glanced nervously around.  “There are times, Lydia, when a good, healthy f-bomb is not only appropriate but damn near mandatory.”

They all chuckled, but their laughs were soft, the atmosphere still feeling like a hostile warzone.

  I opened my senses back up, probing the building around me with techniques I had been using since middle school.  The pull toward the basement was still there, but something also waited above. 

Pausing at each floor to
feel
things out, I kept us climbing till we reached the top of the building.  A sense of foreboding and doom crept up on my little group, increasing the higher we went.  Like suspenseful music in a horror flick.  Gina’s fear had increased and Nika acted uncomfortable.  Stacia was afraid but controlling it.  She smelled increasingly of wolf, and she growled softly to herself as she continued to check behind us.

“Think how hard this would be without those nifty necklaces,” I said in a normal voice, making almost everyone jump.  They all glared at me. “What?  You think they can’t hear whispers?  Besides, I want it to come to me.  That’s always easier than chasing them down.”

“You’re actually comfortable with this, aren’t you?” Lydia asked, amazed and slightly pissed off by my attitude.

“Yeah, I guess I am.  It’s the first thing that makes sense to me.  The first situation where I actually understand what’s going on.”

“Are we really going to have to hunt this thing down?” Stacia asked, her attention on the area behind us.  She was doing an excellent job of rear guard, something most people suck at.  The average human wants to see what’s in front, where they’re headed.  But a good
tail-end Charlie
needs to keep all their attention on the vulnerable space behind their group.  I guess having an Army ranger for a father added a whole different layer of childhood skills. 

Wait, how did I know her father was a ranger?  It was just a little piece of information that popped up. 

We were now on the top floor, walking down the hallway toward the last apartment.