Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8) (5 page)

They both stared without saying a word, then after a moment Grace narrowed her eyes as if listening to something far away, her eyes twitching in their sockets. I readied my magic, waiting, but she didn’t attack.

“You’re Triggaltheron,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“If you know who I am, then you know you’re making a big mistake rattling my cage,” I answered. “Now get to yappin’ before I beat the answers out of you.”

Grace sighed and shook her head, her upper lip pulled back in a disgusted sneer. She seemed oddly disconnected considering she was technically staring down the barrel of a gun that was loaded with bullets made out of Anti-Christ.

I realized then she was listening to someone inside her head, recognizing the signs as her eyes rolled up. My senses leaked out quick and peeked under every stone and branch in the area. I caught the barest sense of another mystical signature—one that felt vaguely familiar—but it vanished as soon as I touched it, leaving me wondering who it might have been.

Grace started talking then, distracting me. “I can’t tell you what you want to know, demon,” she said, lowering her chain blade and reaching a hand out to grasp the other girl by her arm, pulling her back, “but I
can
tell you this: You’ll find what’s left of your wife downtown.” She let out a quiet breath. “You might want to hurry.”

Wasn’t much time for wondering after hearing that, my heart crashing into my ribs in panicked
thumps
. “What did you say?” My cheeks went nuclear at the thought of Karra.

She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, though it clearly wasn’t a happy one, and then the pair vanished in a flicker of energy. I snarled and looked to their pale partner only to see him fade from view the same way. The weight of what she’d said bore down on me so fast that I didn’t bother looking for the diminutive demon. Even if he was still out there in the woods, trying to get information from him would only slow me down. There wasn’t time for that.

If there was a chance to reclaim Karra’s body, Katon and Scarlett could wait.

I was in the air an instant later.

Five

Though the Nephilim hadn’t given me an exact location, it didn’t take more than a few minutes to realize where I was supposed to be. A horde of people had gathered on the street outside of city hall, a serpent of waving arms and flashing camera phones held back by a line of police cruisers and agitated cops. Red and blue lights cast an ugly pallor across the assembled crowd while news crews lit up the scene. It might as well have been daylight out. A dozen reporters stood at the edge of the crowd, playing to their audiences.

My eyes scanned the assemblage and the shadows nearby, certain this was a trap. Though I’d been unsure of the kids’ relationship to the rollers, Grace’s comment made it clear there was a connection there. That almost guaranteed I was walking into something unpleasant. That said, there was no sense of great magic anywhere nearby, but I had to presume that, if the punks I’d just left could teleport, then the three bastards of the apocalypse probably could too. I drifted closer to get a better look at everything and caught several people pointing, their hands jumping to their mouths a moment later. My gaze followed their fingers, and I regretted it instantly.

There, at the top of the flagpole, a sullen lump of familiar blonde hair waved in the breeze. My chest tightened, and I nearly fell from the sky as my brain processed what it saw.

It was Karra’s severed head.

A roar of angst and hurt and rage tore through the night. It spilled from my throat without control as I flung myself at the flagpole. Every eye, digital and otherwise, turned toward me, but I didn’t give a damn. All I knew was that I needed to get to Karra.

I flew over the assemblage and plucked her head from the pole, cradling it in my arms. The tears I’d pushed aside earlier came back in torrents. They spilled down my cheeks, their bitter tang scalding my lips with recrimination. I could hear a tumult of voices coming from the crowd below, but the loudest of them were being drowned out by a loudspeaker that scythed through the noise, ordering me down. I ignored it as I clung to Karra, her hazel eyes staring off into the void after I brushed the strands of her hair aside that hid her face from me. Her skin was cold and stiff, at odds with all my memories of her vitality. There was a bleak emptiness against my senses where her spirit had once burned so brightly. My finger traced her rigid cheek, and her last moments played out in my mind. My stomach lurched at seeing it again. Bile stung my throat as I pulled her to me tighter, burying my face in her wet hair. Everything else was forgotten as I sobbed.

The world hadn’t forgotten about me, though.

Something punched me in the spine right then.

Pain seared my nerves, and I was spun about in a haze, the world whipping past my eyes. A boom of thunder sounded immediately after, little more than a blip on my subconscious radar. Gravity took over, and the ground jumped up to meet me, but all I cared about was Karra. I held her close as I crashed to earth, twisting midair to take the blow on my back. That only fueled the agony of my wound. I ground my teeth together and bit back a scream. It was short lived as anger stole its breath, the realization of what had happened sliding home.

I’d been shot.

I scrambled to my feet, shrugging aside the pain, blood oozing warm and thick down my legs.

Some motherfucker shot me.

My vision narrowed as the blue line that had held the crowd moved toward me, guns out, gaping black barrels pointed my direction. A red filter seemed to drop over my eyes, and all I could see was murder. Before the police could light me up, I drew back a fist and smashed it into the ground, willing my power into the blow.

Had we been in California, they’d have called this the Big One.

My magic spread the impact out so my fist didn’t just sink into the sidewalk. Instead, the punch was more akin to an asteroid striking the planet. The ground buckled beneath the blow, waves of cement rippling out in a circle around me. Gunshots barked but nothing came near me as the ground kicked up, crashing into the officers and tossing them into the air. The flagpole toppled behind me, and I heard the explosion of glass as the great windows of city hall met their demise. The wave continued outward, slamming into the crowd and knocking them down, reverberations lashing at the vehicles behind them before the earth finally settled.

“You can’t have her,” I heard myself scream, barely recognizing my own voice as it boomed over the settling chaos. My body trembled in a way I couldn’t recall having ever felt before. I felt ready to vomit but it had nothing to do with the bullet wound, which was already healing.

The police scrambled drunkenly to their feet, bruised and battered, terror creasing their faces. Their guns still pointed my way, but no one pulled the trigger. The gathering at their backs were stunned into silence, caught between the desire to run and the primal need to see what happened next. I growled. They were likely gonna regret that indecision.

“Get down!” a dozen voices screamed at once, heavy footsteps stomping over the broken concrete with authority.

I turned to see what must have been fifty soldiers in tactical gear swarming toward me. Garbed all in black, only the tiniest slit of skin showing at their eyes, they were loaded for bear. Several carried assault rifles and shotguns, and they all packed side arms. Some were even carrying bandoliers of grenades strapped around their chests.

They were the trap that had been set.

Having come out of nowhere, there was no way they were there by coincidence. They’d been lying in wait, and I could almost guarantee it had been one of their own that had put the bullet in my back earlier. I triggered my shield at that thought, vaguely wondering why they hadn’t tried to take my head off again. They’d plenty of opportunity.

“Down on the ground!” they shouted in unison, training overcoming any fear they might have had.

I stared at them, my mind slowing peeling back the layers of fury that stifled my senses. They closed on me, guns leading the way. Despite the men’s obvious military discipline, not a single one of them wore anything that identified who they worked for, but that was as telling as if they had. These guys weren’t SWAT or Army. Of that I was sure. They were clearly one of the alphabet agencies.

I bared my teeth and glared at the men. Whoever they were, they were going to pay for their interference. They seemed willing to go down that road.

Before I could do anything, they unloaded. My defenses held solid as bullets buzzed, ricochets peppering the already shattered concrete nearby with vicious
pings
. There were shouts of surprise and pain from the crowd behind me as shots went wild. Still the bullets came. My brain scrambled to find a gear that made sense of what was going on, but I was having a hard time putting it all together. Despite their composure, the soldiers didn’t have the barest respect of fire control. They weren’t shooting controlled bursts or even sighting down their barrels. Instead, they were going full auto and blasting everything they had at me.

The police who’d clustered at my back fled for cover before the onslaught. Several of the unlucky ones lay on the ground, bleeding and groaning as bullets ripped into them. The crowd erupted into motion, screams wailing in their wake as they ran to escape, people around them twitching erratically before falling over. The agents just kept firing. These guys didn’t give a damn who they hurt, I realized.

I saw one reach for a grenade and whatever restraint I’d managed dissolved beneath the fiery assault of my anger. The guy had just pulled the pin when I drove forward wrapped my hand around his. Bones
crunched
as I squeezed. He screamed.

That was what I’d wanted.

With a sharp twist, I bent his arm around and drove his own fist into his mouth, grenade and all. Teeth exploded and his jaw popped loose of its moors, blood spilling down his chin. His eyes went wide, and he struggled to tear his shredded hand free of his mouth, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. Karra clutched tight in the crook of my left arm, I headbutted the guy’s jaw back into place, nearly severing the hand stuffed deep in his mouth. A kick to his midsection sent him flying to into his companions. They scattered like bowling pins, desperate to be away from him.

So much for camaraderie.

There was a muffled
whump
a few seconds later, and the air was filled with a sheen of crimson, gray, and white, bits and pieces of grenade boy’s skull—and most of his upper torso along with it—pattered down in a grisly rain. The men closest to him were struck by the concussion and flailed about senseless. That didn’t stop the rest of them.

Just as they had before, the agents sprayed rounds indiscriminately despite seeing how ineffective their attack had been. Bullets hissed and whined off my shield but not a single one broke through. Still, they just spraying.

I glanced behind me to see the crowd had mostly dispersed, but there were dozens upon dozens of wounded or dead left behind. Some crawled, wailing desperately for help, while others lay still, dead or unconscious. Beneath the barrage of gunfire, though, they were on their own. Not even the police held their ground, choosing instead to wait out the battle behind the rows of cop cars and news vans.

The voice of reason screamed at me to run, to get away. All I’d wanted was to recover the piece of Karra the holy rollers had so cruelly displayed for the world to see, but the situation had gone beyond that now. People were dead because of me, and more were dying every minute. The ghost of my mother would have implored me to do something, to keep her people from harm, but I’d come to terms with that part of my brain that lied about being my mother’s conscience. She was long gone, and I hadn’t known her as well as I thought I had. No, that imagined voice of compassion and restraint was long gone, buried as deep as the woman I’d pretended was still around to guide me even after all these hundreds of years.

My psychosis wasn’t entirely wrong, though.

I charged the men without another thought. There’d been no mercy in their assault, and I offered them the same. My fist punched a hole in the vest of the man closest, and I spread my fingers wide inside his chest, feeling his lungs make way for them. He gurgled behind his mask, a darker stain spreading across the blackness. I didn’t even let him die before I used his thrashing body to club one of his companions down. He crashed into his buddy, and the two crumpled to the ground in a bloody, crippled heap.

More bullets sang past but their numbers diminished as I rode roughshod through the ranks of the agents. To my surprise, and morbid glee, they stood their ground. One by one they hit the ground: skulls crushed, arms ripped from sockets, and eyes gouged. As easy as it would have been to wipe them from existence with my magic, I needed more than that. I needed the
creak
of bone giving way, the
thump
of flesh impacting against my fists, the screams of agony as I tore them limb from limb.

I held up a dripping trophy, an arm torn loose at the elbow, and shrieked at the last of the men who still had the courage to hold their positions. They vanished in a whirl of gray.

Clouds billowed around me like a storm dropped to earth. Where the lights of the cameras and police cruisers had suffused the night, a featureless fog rose up, bleaching all the color from the world. It tasted of sulfur and approaching rain, electrical energy setting my hair on edge. My senses rang out with its presence.

“Damn it, Frank! What are you doing?” I didn’t need to look to know who the bassy Barry White imitator was.

I spun about. The look on Rahim’s face drew me up short.

I’d seen him pissed at me before—a common enough occurrence—as well as disappointed more times than I could keep track of. I’d seen his look of pity often enough, too, not to mention the one where he was confused by me. This one was different, though, and it brought me to a halt, my power fizzling.

He was afraid, but not of me. For me.

I just stood there for a moment before realizing I was brandishing a half severed arm in one hand and Karra’s head in the other. I could only imagine what I looked like. The arm slid from my grasp as we stared across the intervening space he’d left clear of his spell that had cloaked us in mist.

Rahim drew in a deep breath, his huge shoulders slumped, and let it out as though it pained him. His dark eyes took the whole of me in, but whatever he might have been thinking he kept to himself, choosing instead to focus on what he’d come there for in the first place.

“We need to go.”

He didn’t give me a chance to object. His power encircled me, and I let it. A moment later we were gone.