Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) (37 page)

I’d have called it regret.
I picked up the vodka bottle and finished it off, with a silent apology to my much abused liver. I dropped the bottle on the loveseat and
headed out
. I wanted a little distance from the house before opening a gate. The transition back to my world might damage the room. That would be poor gratitude for the hospitality I’d received.

I’ll jump for home from the outer courtyard. After all, there are no longer any gargoyles to get in my way
. As I
reached
the library doors
,
they
slammed in my face. The lock clicked.

What the hell? Oh yeah, she’d said her
reality
might resist letting me go
,
but I can’t let it make a difference.

I pointed my gun at the door and then remembered I was out of ammo. Okay, time to go old school.
I raised a knee and lashed out, kicking the lock. The door shuddered, but didn’t break open. Instead, the doors fused together and turned into
high quality
tungsten steel.

I shrugged.
Okay, I’
ll
leav
e
from here instead
.

I looked at the tat on my arm, willing it to life.

T
he books left the shelves, flapping like birds, buzzing me, smacking my body in a desperate bid to break my concentration. A particularly heavy book
whapped
me in the back of the head. I went down in a daze
with the world spinning
off center
.

“Sonofabitch!”

THIRTY-SEVEN

“
Women have a way of disarming a man
.”

—
Caine Deathwalker

On hands and knees, I blinked dizziness away, looking for the pearl that had fallen from
my
hand. I reached past a steepled book on the floor for the
glossy bead. The book flipped over, becoming a manacle as the pages hardened to steel and fused to the tiled floor. I growled at the checkerboard pattern. “I’m leaving. Get over it.”

The floor under me turned butter-soft. I sank a few inches and stopped, the floor gripping my circumference.
Overhead, the books from the shelf continued to flap in
agitation.

My open hand lay a few inches from the pearl. It might as well have been a thousand yards—but under the force of my desire, the pearl rolled to me. My hand closed around it. Then I focused on the book-cuff the same way I’d focused in my fight with the gargoyles. The cuff was paper once more, old and brittle, yellowed with the passage of uncountable ages. The stuff tore loudly under the pressure I applied. Using that one arm, I tried to lever myself up. The edge of the floor wouldn’t let me go.

I considered warming up the tat for
Dragon Flame
, but
I had a mental vision of turning the library into an inferno with me trapped inside, and decided
I needed
a safer plan.
Before I could think of it, Old Man acted. Thunder shook me in its teeth, blasting me several feet into the air. Looking down, I saw Old Man’s sword blade protruding from the mirror I wore. Three feet of it extended from the glass. The blade was wreathed in violet lightning, a big crater under the tip. I fell
and
cover
ed
the hole as the sword
was pulled
back
through
the mirror, leaving me on my own again.

So I wouldn’t lose the pearl again, I put it in an empty pocket for ammo clips, and snapped it closed

Thanks Old Man. I owe you one.

Old man’s hand came out of the glass. He held
up
four clips of ammo.
I took them and reloaded my guns.

Owe you two.

The flapping books were diving again. Who needed gargoyles? I shielded my face with one arm, running to the ladder that serviced the next
level
up. As I put my weight on the bottom rung, it snapped like a
Popsicle
stick. I jumped higher. The next r
u
ng broke a
s
well. I slid down, and ran for the door to the
party
room
.
I more than half expected the door to lock itself in my face, but it opened at my touch and I burst through.

The door slammed behind me, locking with a click. This was a room I’d never seen before. The Red Lady wasn’t here. Neither was the party I’d left
,
or Salem’s corpse.
I stood in a hall that stretched on forever. The walls left and right were ten feet apart, and line
d
with old suits of armor. The helms were plumbed with red-dyed ostrich feathers. The suits each had unsheathed broadswords, their tips grounded between iron feet. Each warrior also had a triangular shield with the top edge scalloped. The design was simple; a full, red moon on a sable sky.

A gauntlet?

I stood still, watching carefully for any sign of motion. Nothing moved, but I knew better than to relax my guard. I also had a suspicion that the second I warmed up the lotus tattoo, I’d be in the midst of an all out melee with the armor.

I took a step.

Nothing.

I took another step and waited.

Nothing.

I took a third step, getting between the next set of armored figures. I heard steel sliding on steel. Turning, I saw the first two armored suits step off their stands, blocking my retreat, like I wanted to go back and be swarmed by books. The two suits did nothing besides block my path. I turned back to face the long gauntlet, and took a couple more steps. Once more, the suits I passed filled in the hall behind me, making no other aggressive move.

That made sense. The house didn’t want to hurt me. The Red Lady claimed to love me. The house would share that feeling. It had yet to actually do significant damage. Still, if provoked into more extreme measures, the house could always hurt me by accident.
I shouldn’t take my safety for granted.

I holstered the PPK I held. There were too many suits. I needed to conserve my ammo. I stood there a moment, whistling a jaunty tune, lulling the hallway into complacency,
and then sprinted at my top speed down the line of warriors. The suits to the side blurred past. The ones behind me became noisy, piling into the center of the hall, clattering into each other in their haste. From the sound of clomping metal feet, I knew they were giving chase.

What they’d do when they caught, I didn’t know.

The suits beside me
stirred
as I reached them. A few steps later, those up ahead began to move, a
s a
wave of animation
swept
the hall. The suits at the end of the hall were stepping off their stands, plugging up my escape, and I still had half the hall to go.

No choice now. I warmed the tat for
Vampire Speed
and slammed full ahead. As I hoped, the
house
didn’t react to that spell, consumed with keeping me from using the lotus-dragon tat instead.

Four pairs of suits barred my way at the end of the hall. I was lucky; instead of thrusting swords at me, they formed a barricade, presenting shields toward me. Just before I would have collided with them, I leaped. This wasn’t much different from body
-
surfing a crowd at a concert—except their heads came off as I plowed through, skimming over their shoulders. I flew past the last pair, out of the hallway, and found myself above a rather dark, deep pit.

Surrounded by eight empty helmets with red-dyed plumes, I began to fall, feeling something like the coyote from the roadrunner cartoon. Wind whistled past my face. I fell
… a
nd fell
… a
nd fell
… into a strand of something sticky and stretchy. I dropped like a yoyo and rode back up into the darkness
.
The second time descending, a strand caught my left boot. On the way up again, multiple cords swirled around me, wrapping up various parts of my combat suit. I couldn’t see the strands, but suffered the unpleasant sensation that I’d become a fly in a spider web.

I decided not to hang around for the spider. Pain shuddered through my body as electric current jazzed through my muscles, igniting the blood in my veins. Each nerve ending screamed —the price of the
Dragon Fire
tat I activated. My s
uit
shimmered dull red
. Flames curled around my limbs, seeking out the strands. They caught fire, burning with a sulfur color and rotten-egg stench. The flames raced along the strands, and soon gave form to a web such as I’d imagined.

Sometimes I hate being right
.

The webbing burned, but wasn’t consumed.
The web
bounce
d
. Dark figures scuttled closer, taking on more detail. Th
e
y were shadow people, eyes red as coals,
female
from the waist up,
with
arachnid lower
bodies
. Their hairy
,
spider legs were quite secure on the strands despite the swaying and bobbing.

They ringed me, using their weight to accelerate the bouncing I was going through. I recognized the tactic; they were doing their best to disorient,
to
break my concentration so I couldn’t do magic. I had fought more evil opponents, more powerful ones as well, but nothing so unrelenting.

The webbing was tough
. I could pour more energy into my spell, but maybe there was a better way. I felt as if a linebacker had stomped on my stomach as I activated the
Demon Wings
tattoo on my upper back. I expected the tattoo to cloud the house’s perception of me, making it lose interest, maybe assuming I’d already escaped. I should have remembered that this reality caused my magic tats to function erratically.

My back felt an acid burn
, as if s
kin
were
blacken
ing
and
splashing
away. My shoulder blades flow
ed
like wax.
The sharpness of the pain was a new high, suspending my breath as strobing agony filled my synaptic gaps. And then new impulses came, trying to convince my brain I’d acquired extra limbs. I flexed them, and tore free of the webbing, onyx wings slicing me free. My demon wing tat had become true demon wings, hauling me into the yawning darkness above.

The wind stream cooled my face as I plunged past the ground level, up to a third floor level where a
plaster
ceiling
loomed closer. The ceiling used foreshortening and painted shadows to create a three-dimensional image of a dome where there was no dome. I discovered this the hard way by ramming straight into it
.
Blood dripping down my face, neck nearly broken, I fell, stunned beyond thought
as d
arkness closed in.

Red light filtered through my eyelids. I groaned as
I
started to move
,
and sharp pain jagged through my skull. It wasn’t as bad as a tattoo activating, but worse than a hangover—most of my hangovers anyway.

A familiar ache in my legs told me I’d paid the price for using
Vampire Speed
while unconscious.

My eyes opened. Amber tiles slid underneath me. I lay on my side. Two shadow women—fully human, dressed in toga-like wraps—dragged me by my right arm, draining my life force for the strength they needed.

I looked ahead of them
to see where we were going. An
arch. A kitchen lay beyond. A damn big kitchen. This was the kind of kitchen a castle would have that might need to feed hundreds. I was pulled over the threshold, past a wall of shelves stacked with pots, pans, skillets, and kettles. There were tables where food could be prepped, sinks for dishes, where vegetables could be cleaned, and a number of ovens. I smelled assorted spices and the scent of
wood
smoke
and grease.

They jerked me through another turn and I saw a brick oven large enough to stick a whole cow on a spit.
Our
destination seemed to be a big wooden block
,
old and
stained. A butcher’s block.
Ther
e
was a large ax embedded in the block. It looked familiar. I tried to remember where I’d seen it before, but my brains still felt scrambled. Thinking was slow, hard.

It came to me in a rush that put the copper taste of fear in my mouth. This was the ax that the court executioner had carried, the one he’d wanted to use to lop off Salem’s head.

The ladies pulled me right up to the block, dragging my arm across its top. I smelled the stale iron scent of dried blood as they held my arm in place. A third shadow woman walked past me. She joined the others, reached out, and placed her hand on the handle of the ax. With a sudden backward lunge, she freed the blade. Her gaze fell on my arm as she raised the ax, prepa
ring to bring it slicing down.

They’d found a helluva way to keep me from using my tattoo. They were removing it—and the whole arm while they were at it.
The building probably figured the Red Lady could grow me another.
I was not about to put her to that
kind of
trouble.