The Demon Beside Me (18 page)

“That was to bleed you.” Victor laughed as he came within twenty feet. “Do you truly think I would spend so many lives for nothing?”

“Demon, light me up,” Tink whispered. I lit a candle flame of hellfire and held it up in front of the two of us. “Come on, give me more than that.”

“You want to carry me?” I whispered back. “Besides, you know it isn’t working right.”

“Trust me. Give me just a bit more.”

I flicked the flame a little larger. “Come on, Victor. You know you want a taste.”

“But it isn’t working right!” He mimicked my voice, then laughed again. “Demon, give me your life and perhaps we will spare your people.”

“Which people?” I asked.

That halted him for a second. “The demons, of course. The humans are no threat.”

“Tell that to Throne Jordan.”

His expression clouded as he started advancing again. “Perhaps they do deserve more attention. Once your type is dealt with, we can proceed to subjugate them.”

Tink shook her head and took a deep breath. “Subjugate this, asshole.”

Instead of a focused beam of force and hellfire, Tink lit off a cone of fury, directing it right toward Victor’s face. Without any sort of focus, my ball of hellfire sprayed across the entire cone of force. Tink grabbed my hand and pulled me away from her rune, which was still belching fire, long after my hellfire dissipated. “The hell did you do?” I asked as we broke into a run.

“Set it up to continue burning for a bit. No one likes walking through fire, even if it’s not hellfire.” She stumbled and I grabbed her arm to steady her. “It’s a little draining, though.”

“Don’t faint on me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, demon.” We made it to the far side of the parking lot without any active pursuit, as far as I could tell. The road was disturbingly empty for this time of day. We jogged across and made our way down a short alley to get to the other side of the block. “Think we’ll lose them doing this?” she asked.

“Not a chance,” I said. “Our best hope is to just draw things out until Kibs gets back with some help.”

“Shouldn’t he have been back by now?”

I shrugged and turned left. While my apartment wasn’t quite downtown, it wasn’t terribly far away either. The angels might expect us to head in that direction, to hide among the crowds, or simply to discourage them from using overwhelming force in order to avoid human casualties.

They would find us, and they wouldn’t care who got in their way. We were heading away from downtown. Tink was starting to breathe all too heavily, so as soon as we made it past another intersection, I held her back. “He wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to bleed us,” she wheezed.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, thumbing through the contact list down to Caleb’s name. The call hit his voicemail after a few rings. No surprise. I thumbed further down to Hikari’s name. She picked up on the second ring. “Zay?”

“Hikari, we’re in trouble.”

“No shit. I’m glad I don’t have a loud ringtone.”

“Are they chasing you down too?”

She laughed, sounding a little bitter. “I’m holed up here in that convenience store around the block. I have half a dozen wards keeping them from noticing me, but I’ve still counted four different angels poking their heads in here. Five, now.”

“Are you in any danger?”

“I don’t think so.” Her response was a bit slow. “He’s gone now. There’s no way I can leave here without getting spotted, though.”

“Did you get an emergency call out to the conclave?”

“Yes. They’re going to ground.”

“Good. I wanted to make sure you’re ok. Victor’s chasing us down. I can’t get in touch with Caleb.”

She swore quietly into the phone at great length. I glanced over at Tink, who was still trying to catch her breath. “I’ll try and reach Caleb. What about the Asmodeus reinforcements?”

“No idea. Opheran’s next on the calling list.”

“All right. If I see any of them, I’ll call you.”

“Thanks. See you later.” I closed the phone before she could respond, then thumbed down further to my direct line to Prince Opheran.

He picked up practically instantly. “Stay wherever you are.”

“Not possible, my Prince. They’re chasing us. Lucky to get a couple minutes to make a couple of phone calls.” I saw a flicker of white down the street and grabbed Tink’s arm. She hissed out an exasperated breath and followed me. “What’s the delay?”

“There’s a company’s worth of Choirboys blocking the direct routes. We’re starting to filter people in through the back routes, but it’s slowing us down. Can you make your way toward one of them?”

“Give me a place to be,” I said. “We’re on foot, though, heading toward the outskirts of town.”

“Shit. Most of our portals are downtown. I assumed you’d be heading that way.”

“I assumed they thought that too. We can double back.” I pointed across the road and Tink nodded. We’d cross that block and then head downtown.

“Better yet, can you double back to where your apartment is? They might not expect that.”

“Where it was.”

Opheran hissed. “Damn.”

“Yeah, my insurance company is going to drop me like a hot potato after this. They still haven’t forgiven me for the last time.”

“Insurance is-”

“The least of my problems, my Prince. I know. We can try to double back there. Hopefully Victor and his clowns won’t be expecting that.”

“Victor,” Opheran said. He growled softly, the sound hissing over the phone line. “That one is more trouble than I thought he’d be.”

“You’re not the only one who’s underestimated him, my Prince.”

“Demon,” Tink said.

“Isaiah, if you get the chance, make sure he doesn’t get the chance to cause us any more trouble.”

“Of course, my-”

Tink tackled me. The phone went flying out of my hand and the wall behind us took the bolt of holy fire meant for me. Heat washed over me, sharp and sweet, then faded away. She grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the spot as quickly as possible. “You talk too much, demon,” she snarled.

“You didn’t even give me a chance to finish my call! Did you see where my phone went?” I scrambled to my feet and followed her running around a corner. Another bolt of holy fire struck the ground right behind us, throwing shards of concrete and asphalt at our legs.

“I am pretty sure you are never going to see that phone again,” she said. “We’re doubling back?”

“Opheran said we should rally back at the apartment. Choir’s stalling their main forces. This place has become a really unhealthy neighborhood in the past couple of days, you know.”

“They’re probably closing a loop around us here,” Tink said. “Should we run like hell?”

“I don’t know how well either of us can run at this point.”

“Try to run like hell, then.”

She took off sprinting ahead of me. I admired the view for a second before following. We made good time for a couple of blocks before she slowed to a stop and started sucking wind. Before we could completely recover, I caught sight of white wings in the sky ahead of us. I pushed her sideways to try and hide around a corner, but she stumbled and fell. The commotion attracted attention and the angel swooped down toward us.

“Not good,” I said.

Tink gasped for breath, then held her knife high in a trembling hand. “Get ready.”

“For what?”

The angel swooped down around the corner. He held his sword and shield ready in front of him, clearly expecting trouble. What he wasn’t expecting was for Tink to leap over his head. His sword and shield automatically went high and he started to turn. I reached out and grabbed his wing as it fluttered toward me, then invoked hellfire on my ichor-streaked palm. The feathers ignited instantly and the angel squawked, mostly in surprise. He turned to spin back toward me, but then Tink landed on the opposite side. She dropped to one knee, then sprang up toward him, her knife thrusting ahead of her. The blade caught the angel right around where a human kidney would be and he stiffened. She shouted a word of command and pulled away.

The angel caught fire.

I scooted backwards. “Tink, what the hell did you do?” I shouted over the angel’s sudden screams.

“You know how you told me that would never work? I fixed it!”

The angel’s screams took on a new intensity. The flames coating his body started to flicker, taking on a pronounced greenish hue. What was left of my blood started to turn cold. “Tink, did you have any of my ichor on that knife?”

“What if I did?”

“Run like hell! Again!” I sprinted for her and grabbed her around the waist. She folded with a gasp and I struggled onwards. Behind me, I heard the angel’s screams rise in pitch, then abruptly stop. Before we could make it halfway down the block, the reaction peaked.

I had never witnessed a volatile reaction before. I almost failed to witness this one. Stark white light flashed behind us. I heaved Tink toward the marginal safety of a mailbox and dove down on top of her, drawing another gasp and grunt from her.

A roar nearly drove my ears into my skull. White light flashed again, but this time, the light was nearly bright enough to blind me, even facing away with my eyes closed. The shockwave came next, the ground bucking beneath us, and then I felt the mailbox tear loose and slam into my back before bouncing away. I felt something crack and hoped it wasn’t my spine. The next shockwave tore me away from Tink and sent me spinning through the air.

I opened my eyes an indeterminate amount of time later. My entire body ached as if I had just been beaten to within an inch of my life. The sky above me was mostly gray, but part of it was blond. It took me a moment to focus on the blond part and resolve it into Tink’s face. She was trying to say something, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. I reached up toward my right ear and my hand came away sticky and wet. “Not good,” I said, but I could barely hear myself.

“Demon, don’t move!” She slapped my hand down to the ground. I tried to focus on her, but my eyes were just a little blurry. “Shit, we have to get you to a hospital or something. Opheran needs to get here. Shit, I don’t know what to do.”

“Need to rest,” I said. “Need to regenerate ichor.”

“I don’t think you have a lot of time to do that.”

I tried to shrug. “Not a lot of choice.”

“We have to get out of here!”

“I thought you said don’t move?”

“If you’re feeling good enough to argue with me, you’re good enough to move.” She grabbed my hand and pulled. I sat up and looked around. Where that angel had come down, there was now a sizable crater in the ground. The building that had loomed over that corner was now lopsided and leaning precariously toward the street. Power lines were down all over the place, sparks sputtering and throwing strange shadows across the rubble.

I tried to stand up, but my legs refused to take that sort of weight. “I’m not sure I can get out of here fast enough,” I said.

“Fast enough is relative,” she snapped. “Shut up and get up.”

“Tink, get the hell out of here. They’ll be here soon.”

“And you need to not be here when they get here!”

I took a deep breath and forced blood and ichor to pump and regenerate. It couldn’t fix all of my problems, but I could at least stand up and take a full accounting of my status. The status was not good. One eardrum had clearly ruptured and I couldn’t hear anything from my left side. The left side of my body had taken some flash burns, while my right side had taken the impact from hitting the sidewalk and street. The mailbox had hit me square in the back and there was definitely something broken. Whether it was my spine or just some of my ribs was open to debate, but as I could feel my legs, it was more likely just my ribs.

“Demon!” Tink shrieked and yanked at my arm. I tumbled in that direction. While I was busy trying to put myself back in order, the Choir had found us. An angel dropped to the ground directly in front of me, and a gust of air from behind told me that we were now officially surrounded. Swords came out, pointing at me.

“Well, Tinkerbell, I think this might be it,” I said, slowly lifting my hands.

“You’re always too quick to give up,” she snapped.

“You try taking that sort of blast first.”

“That’s what I keep you around for.”

Another angel dropped to the ground near us. Victor’s scimitars flickered into his hands, then vanished as he surveyed the scene. He spun to face me, his face as furious as I had ever seen him. “Report,” he hissed.

I opened my mouth, but one of the other angels spoke before I could come up with anything. “It seems as if there was a volatile reaction, sir.”

“It seems, does it?” Victor’s eyes flicked away from me for a moment. “And who was the unlucky victim?”

“Warren, sir.”

“And I suppose that you are the cause of this, halfbreed?” His gaze returned to me.

“Actually, it was me,” Tink said. Victor glared at her, but she glared right back. “For what it’s worth, I just meant to convince him to go away, not cause...this.”

“You had no idea it would do such a thing?” Victor snapped at her. “None at all?”

“I didn’t even know my knife had any of his ichor left on it until it happened!”

Victor’s gaze turned back to me. “So it was your fault.”

I rolled my eyes. “You could say it was his fault too, with that sort of reasoning. Damn him for having purity in his veins!”

Victor’s fist smashed into my face. I felt my nose break, then my legs gave way and I dropped to my knees. As soon as I was there, the toe of his boot made intimate contact with my solar plexus. All of the air in my lungs left immediately, making no promises to return. I fell on my side and gasped.

It might have been minutes or months later before I caught my breath. I glanced upwards to see three angels looming impassively over me, and one tiny girl crouched protectively over me, knife in hand. “I told you, the next one to touch him is going to get the point here, and I haven’t cleaned this off. If I need to make it clearer, I’ll stab him first before I stab you.”

“I have no reason to kill you at this time,” Victor said. “Do not stand in our way.”

“She’s crouching in your way,” I wheezed.