Iron Inheritance (23 page)

“Paramedics will be here soon, and they’ll find her in perfectly good health.” He smiled. “I just made her forget and go to sleep. She won’t remember a thing.”

I nodded and faced forward, adding that skill to the list of abilities I had no idea about.

“You know this isn’t the smartest thing to do, right?” Josh whispered in my ear, a wry grin gracing his lips.

“On three, then,” I said, my jaw set, the words of the last demon I’d spoken to ringing in my ears as I stretched my hand out the window.

The black cloud in my hand purred softly.

“One. Two…”

“Three!”

I opened my hand, and Nate punched the gas. The darkness surged forward like it was fired from a sling shot, a long skinny void slithering straight down La Cienega Boulevard.

“The light!” Freddy yelled, a red light passing over our heads as cars swerved to avoid smashing into the back end.

Nate revved the engine, and we were pushed back into our seats.

“Slow down.” Ria’s strained voice came from the backseat.

I gritted my teeth, all that she’d said at the party still pecking at the back of my skull. Not even a demon attack could make it go away.

“Can’t. The trail’s already getting dim.” Nate clenched his jaw and wrenched the wheel to the left, tires screeching across the ground.

My shoulder slammed into the door, and Josh’s hand pressed against the metal frame above to keep his body from sliding over and crushing me.

My heart pounded in my ears, and the effervescent black liquid floating through the air was visible to me for another second. As long as I kept the adrenaline up, it seemed like I could see it.

Nate blew through another intersection and then screeched to a stop that snapped the seatbelt into my chest.

“We’re here.” He narrowed his eyes and cut the engine.

Across the street, a long, two-story building stretched around the block like a wall surrounding a compound. About twenty yards down, I spotted a black hole in the wall that decreased its size by the second until it was completely gone, only beige stucco left.

“Where’s here, exactly?” asked Ria, creaking her door open onto the desolate street. A golden streetlight shone down from above. The cracks in the pavement matched the cracks reaching through Nate’s windshield.

I stepped out and looked from left to right. No other cars. No other people, as far as I could see. So why come to some kind of office building? “What’s the plan here?” I asked, more to myself than anyone else.

“I’ll take the machine gunner on the roof. You take the two guards at the north and south entrances,” Freddy said, mirroring the rigid scowl Nate had burned into the building since we’d arrived. “What?” he added innocently. “No one plays video games?”

I smiled. Nate ignored him completely and waved us several paces forward so we could see the company sign over a narrow alleyway that split the building in half.

It was a movie studio.

Nate shook his head and waved us back. “Babylonians design their headquarters like our own—a maze of hallways and tunnels and a thousand other precautions to make sure we don’t get in. And when a demon’s essence comes back to the summoner, they’ll know we killed it,” he added darkly, every syllable a warning for us to turn back.

“But they won’t know we followed it,” said Josh, his expression oscillating between excited and nervous. He kept glancing at me and then looking toward the security booth at the entrance to the alley that led into the studio. We could only see a sliver of it from here, but there was bound to be a guard in there—demon, human, or other. My imagination couldn’t decide at the moment.

“Morales will have our heads for breaking the peace,” Nate said more adamantly, obviously trying to get the rational side of my brain to come out from behind the adrenaline-soaked curtains.

I knew he was right, that this was probably something better left to Patrons with more training, but now I knew the Babylonians were attacking me specifically. The two times I’d left the headquarters I just so happened to run into demons? I don’t think so. The master, whoever he was, still pulled the strings.

And now was my chance to pull back.

“We’re wasting time.” Ria tugged at her dress uncomfortably. Dried blood from her freshly healed scrapes ran down the side. “We won’t get another chance like this.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me forward as everyone else froze.

“Ria, we need a plan,” I whispered hurriedly as we neared the guard’s station. My own dress, little more than red tissue paper held up by frayed string, slipped another inch as the guard came into view. He sat inside his box with his feet up, the sliding door to his left open. If it hadn’t been open, I don’t know that he would have been able to fit in there at all.

“Excuse me. Hi.” Ria ducked under the security gate arm and ran her hands up and down her bare arms until her dress threatened to unleash her breasts—not that it hadn’t been threatening that all night.

The guard fumbled out of his box and stepped in front of us, his eyes narrowing with his arms crossed over his black uniform.

Ria brought her finger to her mouth and chewed on her nail innocently. “My friend and I were just wondering—” She tilted her head forward, a little woozy, and twirled a lock of caramel hair around her finger. “We wondered if you could give us a private tour or something. We love movies.”

A flicker of consideration cracked his stony face. He looked to me as if waiting for my plea.

I turned to Ria with wide eyes and a shake of my head.

“Sock it to him.” Ria winked with a cute little jab to his enormous gut. “Ooh, so firm,” she added, giggling.

The guard kept his arms crossed over his chest but smiled as he looked down at Ria’s cleavage.

Ria turned back and winked at me again. “Pow pow,” she said with two more little jabs to his belly.

Oh!

I sucked in a slow breath and focused my mind on images of Kovac, on the demons that attacked, on the faceless shadow of the master that continually felt out of my grasp.

My fists curled into rocks. Pow POW! I jabbed straight up at the guard’s nose, dodged around when his hand came up, and then rammed my right fist into his kidney.

He dropped to his knees with a low, grumbling moan. I popped him once more in the head, and he was out.

Ria grinned. “See, who needs a plan? Now, let’s go find this jerk who keeps trying to kill you.”

I breathed heavily as the rest of the group came up behind us.

“He’s a bad guy, right?” said Ria.

“Definitely.” Nate nodded as if he could see something she couldn’t. I narrowed my eyes at the guard’s chest and found a darkness similar to the demon’s still swarming around, thumping with his heart.

“We can’t just leave him here. Someone will find him.” Josh looked around at the buildings on either side. There weren’t any cameras, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.

Freddy and Josh looped their arms under the guard’s and started to drag him to a dark alcove so no one would see him from the street.

“No, we can’t just leave him there,” I said.

“Eve, he’s a Babylonian.” Ria shook her head. “Who cares what—?”

“I don’t care,” I snarled, and a flame of anger flared up in me again. There was a part of me that didn’t want to stop punching him, a part of me that wanted to lose complete control and take on every Babylonian who existed just to get this energy out of my limbs. This power burned and whispered that they all deserved it, that I was doing the right thing.

I breathed in and held it. None of that rage would get me anywhere tonight, not with all of them here. Freddy, Miranda, Ria. I should have never agreed to follow the demon in the first place. They couldn’t protect themselves against people like this. Ria acted tough, but she’d never been in a real fight, never even thrown a true punch.

“Eve?” Nate’s calming voice called me back to the present.

I blinked. “Get him back in his box. Put his feet up like when we first saw him.” I turned to Freddy. “Then you heal him and wipe his memory like you did to the liquor store clerk.”

Freddy nodded and turned back around with Josh in tow, each of them supporting one of the guard’s arms.

Ria raised an eyebrow at me.

“We can’t afford for someone to find his body and raise an alarm. When he wakes up, he’ll think he just nodded off.” I turned toward the building on our left. “That’s where the demon went, right?”

“It could have just gone through the walls on its way to the other side of the studio. There’s no telling,” said Nate.

I huffed and tried to think.

“We could look for sulfur,” said Miranda, staring up at the stars as if they might cough the putrid yellow dust down on us as a favor.

“What’re you—” I shook my head and looked up.

Ria let out a squeak of delight. “Sam and Dean were right!”

I chuckled and shook my head, a flood of calm coming over me for the first time in over an hour. “Finally, all that time watching Supernatural’s going to pay off.”

“Get your salt and holy water ready.” Josh came up to my side, his black shirt ripped in several places like the night we first met.

“Do you really think so?” Ria stopped smiling, mad at herself for not bringing any.

“Almost done here,” Freddy called hurriedly. “And once I am, he’ll wake up pretty quickly.”

I dodged in front of Nate and Ria before they could take a step forward and wrenched open the nearest door, the deadbolt breaking the wood jamb. A bright white light blinded me for a second, but no alarm sounded, and no claws came out and slashed me to bits—a large possibility in my mind. Instead, a bland hallway with beige tile and office doors every ten feet or so stretched into the distance before turning sharply to the left.

I stepped forward, and the rest of the group followed. A second later, Freddy closed the door, panting heavily from his jog.

“What’s the plan now?” Ria whispered behind me.

I continued forward, glancing back to see that Nate had them following me in a single-file line that hugged the wall as we rounded the first corner. Every door we passed I expected to burst open, someone or something jumping out at us.

But there was nothing. No one.

We turned another corner, and I started to wonder how many offices one movie studio needed when the click of a gear ticked and echoed two times somewhere ahead. Goosebumps ran up and down my arms, and I held up a fist for everyone to stop. I glanced back at Ria and could see Grandpa shaking his head. He’d taught me better.

We waited for the gear to click again, but nothing happened.

“I’ll check it,” Josh whispered and appeared at my side with a puff of air.

“No, this is on me.” I stepped in front again.

He dodged around me—just out of the reach of my outstretched fingers. “Seriously, I got—”

An invisible electric hand picked him up into the air and shook his bones like a maraca.

“Josh!” I sprang toward him.

At the same moment, his body rocketed backward with a shower of sparks. His back skidded on the tile, and he knocked his head into a wall.

My heart reached up into my throat, and I dropped to my knees next to him. “Josh!” I grabbed his hand, his callused skin rough against my palm.

At my touch he sucked in a breath and rolled over onto his side, sputtering and shaking. I turned his head back to me and looked at his eyes to make sure they didn’t roll back into his head. A blue ocean storm stared back at me for an eternity in a second. He looked like he was going to say something, to reach out and pull me closer to him…to kiss me.

I held my breath.

He exhaled and sat up.

“At least we know you’re definitely not evil now,” said Nate gruffly, stepping up to our side and extending a hand to help Josh to his feet.

“What?” I said.

“Trust me now, do you?” Josh smiled and took his hand, grunting to get on his feet.

“Trust that you’re not evil, not that you’re not an idiot,” Nate said.

I slapped Nate’s chest with the back of my hand. He skidded into the wall from the force.

“Sorry.” I bit my lip.

He clenched his jaw.

“I’ve never seen a Babylonian force field,” said Miranda, five feet ahead of us and staring at the air. “Only dark essence can pass through—that’s why Josh couldn’t. It seems to get power from up there.” She pointed to a light in the ceiling.

“Good thing you weren’t moving at full speed.” Freddy slapped Josh on the back. “If you’d got caught in that when you were running, you’d be extra crispy.”

My eyes widened and my mouth went dry. What was he thinking?

No, what was
I
thinking bringing all these people I cared about to a place like this?

“We need to find another way around,” Nate said, a military swagger surrounding his unspecified order.

“No, you need to get them out of here.” I turned to him. “Josh hitting that force field probably triggered an alarm. You need to run.” My pulse quickened. How were there not ten Babylonians on us already? There’d be no way a Babylonian could get this far inside a Patron headquarters.

“And you?” said Ria.

I clamped my jaw.

“We’re with you.” Freddy put his hand on my shoulder.

Miranda nodded, a much too happy smile between her cheeks.

Josh didn’t say anything and didn’t look at me. His face was blank and angry, like that electric shock had fried his personality chip.

I shook my head and opened my mouth to argue again, my heart compelling me with a dull throb of pain.

“How many more are they going to kill?” asked Ria.

My voice caught in my throat.

“How many? We know Morales isn’t doing anything about it. If we don’t stop them, how many more people are going to jump on train tracks or get eaten by bull-lizard things? I don’t see any other Patrons around here—it’s our job.”

I looked at her soft green eyes and knew she wouldn’t look away
.
I couldn’t convince her of anything right now, and the more I tried, the more time we’d waste.

The more likely we’d get killed, actually.

I looked back over my shoulder through the invisible force field, but saw nothing.