Hunting in Hell (5 page)

Even so, her heart accelerated.
 
A human artifact, it should have been taken when she was reborn as a demon, yet it still beat in her chest, announcing her awareness.

Silently, she crossed her arms and slid them down her sides.
 
With a circular flourish, she drew out the pistol and the revolver and settled them into the ready position.

She didn't hear the click—she
sensed
it.
 
An image appeared in her mind—the hesitant slide of a safety switch, the red dot warning that the gun was ready to fire.
 

"Down!"

Alsvior dropped to his front knees as she buried her face in his mane.
 
The area above him exploded in a shower of drywall and stone, the shot missing them by the smallest fraction of a second.

"Circle!"

In a single motion, he jumped up and took off running.
 
She vaulted off of his back, firing the pistol from midair and toward the bullet's origin.
 
Before she hit the ground, she was rewarded with a scream.

Got you.

Alsvior was completing the circle.
 
Her hands clamped around the gun-grips, she jumped into the saddle with a gigantic springing leap.
 
More snake-like than human, the vault would have shocked any bystander.
 
"Left, sharp," she shouted, and he spun into a low-leaning turn without losing speed.
 

They made a lap without further engagement, and then another
.
 
If there were other shooters, they’re either gone, or biding their time.
 

Her heart still racing, she decided they should take their chances.
 
I want to see this man’s body.
 
She nudged Alsvior with her knees, and he obediently approached the corpse.

It had landed facedown.
 
Thin, small-statured, long hair.
 
De la Roca sucked on her teeth.
 
She could see the exit wound, a burnt hole with shreds of shirt trailing around it like an open flower.
 
But no blood.
 
That’s not a good sign
.
 
She kicked the body with her boot, pushing hard enough to turn it over.
 

Small breasts and delicate cheekbones—it was a woman.
  
De la Roca could see the entrance hole, smaller and finer than the exit wound.
 
From its placement, it’s gone straight through her heart.
 

No blood on this side, either.
 
Her stomach turned, and there was a tension in her head that made her think of the serpent-voice’s laugh.

Demons had many ways of entrapping and controlling humans, from brainwashing to bribery, but true mind-control?
 
That wasn’t an
akra—
a small power.
 

She resumed sucking on her teeth again, the squiggly feeling in her gut getting worse.
 
It’s got to be a
kevra.
 
Few things were as hazardous as a demon's one pure power, no matter what form it took.
 

Unless—what if she was a hired gun?
 
It wouldn't have to be a feeder then.

That doesn't explain the lack of blood.

De la Roca took another frustrated look at the body, but save for its odd pallor, there were no clues to be had.
 

Alsvior pawed at the ground with his hooves and whickered softly.
 

She ran her fingers through his mane.
 
"Impatient, are we?"
 

The stallion tossed his head.

Sighing, she took stock of her weapons again and nodded.
 
"Alright, then."
 

She gazed at the factory.
 
Heat waves from the glaring sun obscured her view.
 
Like the buildings on the rest of the street, it appeared abandoned, but the voice in her mind whispered otherwise, and for a moment, she had the odd sensation of something slithering inside.

"You feel that?"

Alsvior shook until he was coal black again, but stopped short of transforming his mane and tail.
 
If it was dark in there, riding in on a flaming horse would be akin to strapping a target on her back.
 
He pawed the ground and snorted.
 

Quite a few men have fallen victim to those hooves.

She mounted lightly, her hands tight on the grips, and they began their approach.

* * *

The first time she encountered a feeder, she had taken pity upon its legion of human prey.
 
She was haunted by images of previous lives—children, spouses, family pets, dream vacations on the beach never taken.

Riding on the outskirts of the crowd, she spotted a young man, one that couldn't have been older than fifteen.
 
She was struck by his lost youth and the cruelty of his fate, and she decided to save him.

Later, she would wonder if she was also trying to save herself.

She drove Alsvior hard, trusting that he would figure out her intent.
 
Once she was close enough, she leaned sideways in the saddle, grabbed the youth, and strapped him over the saddle horn, ignoring the way he attempted to gouge out her eyes and spit in her face.
 
She jumped off and slapped Alsvior across the rump, yelling for him to get clear.

Once the feeder had been dispatched, she whistled for her mount.
 

Yet when the horse returned, the light had gone out of the young man's eyes.
 
Vaguely, she understood that the man was just a shell now, that whatever had made him human had already vacated his body.
 
She refused to give up, ministering to him gently, feeding and bathing him when necessary.
 
And then one day, she came home to the charred ashes of what had once been the basement.

It had taken some time for her to sift through the pile for the skeleton.
 
That night, before she fell asleep, she imagined an errant spark blowing out of the fireplace and igniting one of the wooden planks on the floor.
 
The fire would have spread quickly to the dry walls, turning the entire room into a blistering inferno.

In her imagination, the young man, whose name she never learned, would sit there, motionless, either not comprehending or not caring about his impending cremation.

In her dreams the next night though, it was the teenager who determined his own fate.
 
In a moment of sudden lucidity, he wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth, leaned over to the fire, and pulled out a burning brand, ignoring the way his skin melted to it.
 
Then, he turned around and deliberately lit the walls on fire, before throwing himself into the fireplace.

A feeder's prey was already dead, crossed over into something past human.
 
Still, it had taken her a century before blowing them away didn't drive a stake into her heart and fill her nose with the scent of ashes.

FIVE

T
he barred entrance presented her with no difficulty.
 
She merely swung her hand in front of her, palm first, and called upon the
akra
of doors.

It swung open with a groan, revealing a dark cavern.
 
She waited for a warning shot, but there was no movement from within.
 

She dismounted, guns drawn.
 
Alsvior was fast, but she was more nimble and a smaller target.
 
She gave him the hand sign for "stay" and rubbed his nose, and his head bobbed in acknowledgment.

Thank you, friend.
 
My life has depended on you many times before.
 
Alsvior was also smart enough to know when to disobey.
   

She padded in silently, blinking as her eyes adapted to the darkness.
 

The first barrage of bullets exploded around her.
 
One whistled by her hair, while another grazed her cheek, bringing with it a zing of pain.
 
She threw herself up feet-first, flipping backwards as a second barrage peppered the area where her head had been.
 
Between the synchronized bursts, the spent lead pinged on the floor like rain.
 

Without the advantage of surprise, there was no point in hiding in the dark any more.

“Alsvior, light!”
 
She shielded her eyes so her vision wouldn’t reset.
 
The horse shook himself, his mane and tail erupting into a roiling blaze.
 
He galloped in, filling the massive room with the flicker-dance of fire and shadows and the drumming of hooves.
 

Shooters will be blind for a few seconds.
 
She jumped to the wall and climbed up, nimbly using ledges, shelves, and window sills as footholds.
 
In seconds, she had reached the top, and she swiveled around to look down on her attackers.

The hundreds of white faces were in straight rows, a cornfield of humans that the feeder—
yes, there was no denying it now—
was harvesting for psychic food.
 
The back of her neck tingled, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

Why don’t they scramble?
 
At the snake-voice’s hiss, she squinted and watched as the heads all turned as one.
 
It was clear from their erratic turns that they were searching for her.

Ah! They're linked together
.
  
She looked up and spied a rafter, and crept higher to use it for cover.
  
She nodded at Alsvior, and he extinguished his mane, plunging them back into darkness.

Temporarily safe behind the rafter, she grit her teeth.
 
I will probably die here
.
 
Thanks to the snake-voice, she had gone in without planning and allowed herself to get bottlenecked.
 
I blazed in here like a damn cowgirl.
  
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 

The rattlesnake voice whispered in her head, alerting her to a possibility she had not considered before.
 
Are you sure this is my fault?
 
Maybe you wanted it this way.

Could that be true?
 
One eye on the zombies below, she tried to think.

At first, her targets had all been mindless animals.
 
A century passed before she was assigned something sentient, self-aware; she still remembered the way the demon had eked out the broken fragment of a word, right before the bullet took it.

After another century, her prey was of human intelligence, smart enough to set traps and even occasionally trick her.
 
Finally, their powers and ingenuity rivaled her own.

And then, in her three-hundredth year of solitude, the Angel had come to her again and offered her total freedom—not only from Hell, but from the mercenary life as well.
 

Unless
—already, the demons were as clever and as tricky as she was.
 
What if these last five are impossible, and the Angel knows it?
 
Worse, what if she knew that?