Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) (27 page)

In the next moment, it was easy to see why. Bursting through the open cavity of her neck was exactly that. A large, segmented worm.

Yeah, take a minute to picture that. A thick, pulsating worm the size of a small dog, inching its way out of Agatha's body. It was a brilliant white, the same color as Oreo filling.

I don't know about you, but the sight of that thing was enough to turn me off of Oreos forever, once I'd made the comparison.

 
The worm
spoke
; a circular mouth lined in fangs produced a shrill warning. “I'll kill the lot of you yet!” The voice was very much Agatha's; I felt like I was meeting her for the very first time. This was the
real
Agatha, apparently, the thing that'd been calling the shots.

That mouth opened, and a thick, foamy spray surged forth. Sailing through the air, the blast missed me narrowly, instead hitting the cellar ceiling.

The wooden joists above our heads began to fizz and burn.

 
Excellent
. The worm had acidic spit.

I took a few steps back, not wanting to get hit by the stuff as it dripped onto the floor from above. It probably wouldn't have killed me, but having my body subjected to acid burns wasn't high up on my list of wants. The ceiling was eaten away and the building above us began to groan.

“Shit,” I muttered. The place was going to fold. Before long, the church was going to collapse in on itself, and we were going to be buried in the cellar beneath a mountain of rubble.

Me and Agatha stood a decent chance at living through such a thing, but Kubo and Joe likely wouldn't. Then there was Isabella. Had she left the church altogether, or would she and the infant fall through the floor and end up buried, too?

“Step back, Lucy!” With a yell, Joe clutched his lighter and made Agatha's corpse ignite. By proxy, the worm slinking out of it was caught up in the flames as well.

Saved me the trouble. Fighting that giant, disgusting creature mano a mano hadn't appealed even to the violent demon in me. Joe worked the flame in a giant ring until the whole of the corpse was engulfed. There would be no escaping the fire.

If you've never heard a giant worm scream while it burns to death, you haven't missed anything. I'd recommend you just go on living without experiencing that, because the sounds it makes are just about as horrific as you can imagine. Worse, even.

In its death throes, the worm spat great, foaming mouthfuls of acid about the room.

The walls were struck and solid bricks were dissolved. The ceiling was hit again, and now the weakened beams were beginning to sag and break.

Agatha and the worm within her were dead.

But the house was about to come down.

THIRTY-NINE

Gadreel was still in the captain's chair as the church began to disintegrate all around us. I sprinted out of the building, climbing the stairs, making my way down the hall and exiting the building the same way we'd come in. Isabella was out on the lawn, twitching awfully and holding a screaming baby.

The church collapsed in on itself, but not before Joe manged to stagger out, Kubo in tow. The chief had regained consciousness, but was leaning on Joe as they exited.

With a terrible crash that could not have possibly gone unnoticed, the building sank and crumbled. A cloud of dust and splinters rained down on us as we watched it come down.

“Holy shit,” muttered Joe, letting go of Kubo and falling onto the grass. His pompadour was covered in dust and his breathing was labored for hauling Kubo up the cellar stairs. “It's over. We did it.” Laughing, he repeated, “it's over” about a dozen more times.

Apparently Gadreel had other plans, however. Because for him, it wasn't over.

When he'd gone into a rage in the cellar, targeting everything that moved, he'd apparently included Joe, Kubo and Isabella in that.

I turned and looked Joe in the eye, grinning widely. “Over? Not yet.”

***

What happened next was out of my control. Gadreel was intent on killing the rest of the team, and though my consciousness politely suggested against it, my preferences fell on deaf ears.

Gadreel was calling the shots completely.

My body was his to use.

I couldn't even argue, I'd been shoved so far into the corner.

Joe was the first target. I raced at him, shoved Kubo away and pinned him to the ground. He panicked at first, and then managed to open his lighter. A large tongue of flame burst from it and washed over my body, but even as my skin began to smolder I didn't ease off of him. “The three of you will pay for what you've done. You misled me,” I said. “You deceived me all this time, hiding the true nature of this mission. For that, you will die.”

A bullet sank into my back.

Kubo's doing.

I turned and scowled at him. The bullet burned awfully. I mean, it was really excruciating, just as it had been the last time I'd been hit with one of Kubo's blessed bullets. But it wasn't enough to bring me down. A second shot, this one to the leg, only increased the pain. But Gadreel was too strong. A hundred blessed silver bullets wouldn't have been enough to bring him down.

I left Joe and took a swipe at Kubo. I found he only had use of one of his arms. Apparently when I'd thrown him in the cellar I'd dislocated one of his shoulders.

 
Oopsie
.

He fired at me again, missing, before the gun was knocked from his hand and the offending fingers crushed. Kubo cried out, gripping at his hand and staggering back. The fingers of his right hand were mashed up, busted, and blood poured from the fractured joints.

I chuckled. “You've earned this,” I told him. “You brought this on yourself, Takeshi. When your grandfather taught you spell craft so many years ago in Kyoto, I'll bet you never expected you'd die this way, did you?” The demon was tapping into forbidden knowledge again, uttering things I shouldn't have had the slightest notion of, just as he'd done to that rough in the alley outside the brewery. “You should've taken over at the temple like he wanted you to. It would have been safer. You and I would have never crossed paths, Takeshi. But you fucked up. Bit off more than you can chew, and when I'm done manhandling your corpse, I'll drink your blood and move up the chain. Your friends at the Veiled Order won't know I'm coming. Your bosses, bless them; I'll be dancing in pools of their blood.”

A fresh wave of fire struck me from behind, but it didn't slow me down. “Fool,” I spat. “I make my home in hellfire. Do you think it's possible to burn me?” I smirked. “That mother of yours is rather sick. Her bone cancer isn't getting any better now, is it?” Gadreel laughed deeply, heartily. “Maybe I should come over, lay her down and give her the kiss of life, eh?” I reached down and squeezed my crotch. “She always had a thing for bad boys, didn't she? May as well give her one last go on the cock carousel before she kicks the bucket. Just hit it and quit it like your father did, yeah?”

Joe was shaking. His eyes were brimming with tears and he held onto his lighter so tightly his hands were getting burned in the process.

Turning back to Kubo, who was fussing with his stack of paper sigils and only succeeding in dirtying them with his blood, I reared back and prepared to cleave through him just like I'd done to the witches.

The blow should've connected, however as my fist was about to strike the top of his head, I met some resistance.

Psychical resistance.

As though an unbreakable, invisible wall separated me from Kubo, my blows were just shy of connecting.

It was Isabella's doing.

“Bitch!” I shouted, pointing at her. “I'd intended to save you for last, but since you insist on interfering, I'm going to carve your guts out, you twitching idiot!” I ran at her, watched as her eyes widened and her hands were wrung till the knuckles grew white. She'd set the baby down in the grass and flinched as I approached like she was waiting to get gored by a raging bull.

I crashed.

Another invisible wall.

Thrashing, I tried to approach from another angle, but found myself blocked in. The more I moved, the more the invisible barrier closed in on me. The fit was so tight now that I couldn't even shrug my shoulders. I was being squeezed with incredible force into submission. Though I roared and cursed, I was stuck.

Trapped.

Kubo stood up, clutching at his hand and panting. “Hold tight, Lucian. You let the demon do too much of the heavy lifting. He's taken over. We're going to force him into the background together. Ready? You'll be yourself again in no time. Just take some deep breaths and listen to my voice. Listen to my voice. I'm reaching out to Lucian, the Lucian we know. Come on out of there, Lucian, and put the demon in its proper place. Regain control of the body that's rightfully yours. The demon is a tool that you control. Don't let it take full possession of you. I know you can hear me, Lucian.”

Gadreel struggled within the invisible box, and then, soon thereafter, he struggled against the confines of my mind.

I could hear Kubo. I could hear him speaking to me, rather than the demon, and slowly my own will was gaining momentum. I was stepping out of the shadows, grappling with Gadreel as he tried to stay put. He liked it in the captain's chair, liked being in total control.

Gadreel was strong, but he didn't know my body as well as I did. Not yet, anyhow.

Shaking against the walls of the invisible box, I shook and groaned.

The next thing I knew, I was slumped over, head between my knees in the grass.

 
But, importantly, it was
me
sitting there. Not Gadreel. The demon had relinquished its control, returned to the background where I could still feel it seething.

I passed out just as the sound of a helicopter came from overhead.

FORTY

When I awoke, I found myself in a familiar setting. A comfortable bed, a bit of sunlight coming in through the barred windows.

I was in the infirmary back at headquarters.

This time, though, at least I wasn't in chains.

I sat up, recalling with too much clarity everything that'd transpired at the church. We'd finished the job, stomped out Agatha's coven like the bunch of rats they were.

Oh, and I'd been completely possessed by Gadreel, tried to kill my team mates and spewed a lot of really hateful shit, too.

It was the latter that concerned me most. I wasn't sure how long I'd been in the infirmary but I knew one thing: I'd been there long enough. Standing up and giving my legs a little bend at the knee, I found myself stable enough to walk and marched to the door. I was still in my regular clothes, which were pretty roughed up and dirty. The back of my shirt was almost completely eaten through for the flames Joe had sent my way.

After all I'd said to the guy, I was surprised he hadn't shown up at the infirmary and finished the job while I recuperated. I certainly deserved it.

I left my room, ambled down the hall towards the lobby. There, seated in one of the chairs with his legs crossed, was Kubo. He was looking a little rough himself, and one of his arms was in a sling. The fingers of one hand, too, were knotted in thick bandages.

Poor guy was going to have a real hard time wiping in the bathroom, by the looks of it.

I winced as I looked him over. Yeah, that'd been my doing. Apologies were in order, but then, a mere apology wasn't going to magically restore Kubo's rotator cuff. I caught his eye as I walked out, and he stood up promptly.

“Awake, are you?”

I nodded. “How long have I been out?”

Kubo shrugged. “Four, five hours.”

It hadn't been very long at all, then. Feeling relieved, I launched into an apology forthwith. “Look, chief... I”m sorry about what happened back there. I wasn't myself, and--”

He shook his head. “Don't worry about it. We completed our mission. Everything that went wrong was the demon's fault, not yours. Really, it was the Veiled Order's fault, for not teaching you how to better control the thing. We managed to get out of there alive, haul your ass back to HQ and knock Gadreel down a peg. You came back to us when I worked with you out there, so we didn't have to resort to an exorcism or anything like that. Consider yourself lucky.”

“And the infant?” I asked. “He was OK? Didn't get hurt or anything?”

 
Kubo chuckled. “Well, aren't you
precious
. Yeah, the kid got returned to his parents, safe and sound. He'll have a lot to talk about in therapy someday, of course.” He straightened the blue straps of his sling.

“And Joe?”

“What about him?” asked Kubo. “He's alive.”

I bit my tongue, the very same tongue that'd let me talk such shit to him. I'd really laid into Joe, had said vile things. My face reddened for the mere remembrance. “Listen, chief, I've gotta go. But before I do, I want to know one thing.”

“Sure.”

“The demon... back there... he said things that I didn't know about. I mean, he has a way of... tapping into people's heads or something. Talking about things that I, Lucian, don't know a damn thing about. How?”

“The demon walks on completely different ground. He uses magic, but it's a different kind. I can't pretend to be an expert on demonology, but peering into someone's heart and using painful memories or the like against them is standard. I'm surprised he doesn't do it more.” Kubo nodded. “Anyway, you've been medically cleared. I'll be in touch.”

With half a shirt on my back, I hastily made my way out of the complex and hit the streets. It was late afternoon as I set off for Joe's place.

***

When I got to Joe's house, I found him sitting on his stoop again. He was stretched out across the first step, his heels up on the handrail, and he was tinkering with his Zippo. The metal wheel turned beneath his thumb and he watched a small flame reservedly for some time. He hadn't changed out of his clothes yet, looked like absolute hell. He knocked a few splinters out of his bedraggled pompadour as I sauntered up. As I'd approached from a distance he'd kept one eye on me and the other on his lighter.

Joe stood up and prepared to go inside just as I stopped at the stoop. He didn't want to talk to me, and I sure as hell couldn't blame him. “Hey,” I said, “there's the guy who owes me a new shirt.” I toyed with the singed, ratty edges of my shirt and grinned, but he was in no joking mood and I quickly lowered my gaze. “Hey, Joe...”