But he nodded, regardless. He was going to try, at least.
Derrick took a step forward. He kept eye contact with the equine demon, and I felt something flow between the two of them. The air around him stirred slightly as he channeled dendrite materia, which was what gave form to psychic energy. I’d seen his power in action many times before. He could pluck a thought lightly from someone’s mind, or drill into it ruthlessly, drawing out information by force.
The demon looked at him strangely for a moment, still distracted by the pain of the howler. Then it began to laugh.
“Really? You think you can break into my mind?” It licked its lips. “Go ahead, you pathetic reader. Give it your best try. I invite you.”
Derrick’s eyes narrowed. I heard him suck in his breath. The flow of power between them intensified, and his hands closed into fists. Miles gave him a worried look, but he needn’t have bothered. Derrick was beyond our reach now, searching the tracts of the demon’s consciousness for a way in, the smallest gap, something that the blade edge of his power could wedge its way into.
“Your mind is like compost,” the demon said. “I just have to squeeze, and all the sad, reeking bits of you will dribble out between my fingers. But I’m going to do it nice and slowly, so your friends can watch.”
Despite its bravado, I could tell that Derrick was wearing it down. The howler’s sonic energy was still throbbing in the air, and a few drops of black blood had begun to leak from the demon’s nostrils. It was weakening.
Derrick pressed on with his attack. He was also bleeding—a slight trickle was running down his face and onto his chin. Miles saw it. His eyes widened.
Tess,
he signed.
Stop him.
Derrick kept pushing. The demon grunted. Then it coughed suddenly, and a clot of blood oozed from its mouth. It began to snarl. I heard Derrick groan.
“Get out!” the demon screamed. “Get out! I’ll kill you!
Xxch’krr nsh nng!
Worm! Bag of pus and blood! I’ll kill you!”
“
Nnnnnh.
Fuck—
you
—” Derrick hissed.
Blood was flowing freely from his nose now, reddening his jacket and the shirt beneath it. Flecks of spit had appeared at the edges of his mouth. He leaned forward, as if bracing himself against an arctic wind.
“Enough!”
the demon shrieked. “Get
out
!”
It flung its arm out in a wide arc. I felt a vast pulse of energy move through the air. A killing current.
“Derrick!”
I channeled everything that I could, reaching deep into the earth node. Desperation lent me strength. The power scalded me. It roared its defiance as it moved through my body, electrifying every cell, until I felt like a negative with deadly light pouring through it. I cried out.
I flung the power in Derrick’s direction, trying to deflect the energy that the demon had summoned.
It half worked. My attack sideswiped the demon’s, knocking the majority of it off course, but a fragment of the power still slammed into Derrick’s body. That was enough to send him flying backward. He sailed through the air, completely limp, the shock of the power having already knocked him out.
He bounced off the metal counter. I heard the crunch of bones breaking. Then he crumpled to the floor. His body lay still.
For a second, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.
Miles, however, didn’t suffer from the same paralysis.
He drew his gun—which he’d kept in an ankle holster—and fired at the demon’s head. He kept firing, and each bullet ripped into the demon’s face, tearing off chunks of its scalp, lacerating its ear, shattering its jaw. Blood the consistency of coffee grounds coated the walls and floor.
For all that, the demon barely moved. Its flesh had already begun to regenerate. The bone and muscle flowed back together, and the mushroomed .40-caliber rounds fell to the ground.
The howler had ceased vibrating as well. Our window had closed, and the demon was back to full form. No diversions left.
It advanced upon Miles. It gestured with its blood-spattered arm, and Miles cried out as an invisible force swept him into the air. He hung motionless, five feet off the ground, his eyes bulging slightly.
“That was really quite brave,” it said. “Do you know what happens to brave boys? They get to die slowly.”
It closed its hand into a fist. Miles choked. His hands trembled at his sides, but he couldn’t move.
“For instance,” the demon continued, “did you know that the human optic nerve can stretch up to a meter before it snaps? That means I can pull both of your eyes out, and you’ll still be able to watch as I remove your heart. In fact, you’ll get a stereoscopic view of it all. I think that makes you pretty lucky.”
I saw a flash of green to the left of Miles. At first, I thought it was the demon-boy. Then I looked closer and realized that it was Dr. Rashid. I’d completely forgotten about him until now. He was slowly approaching the equine demon from behind. There was something in his hand.
A Stryker saw.
“Of course,” the demon was saying, “we could make this even more interesting. I could start liquefying your organs from the inside. Or I can pull your legs off. How long do you think you’ll survive as just a trunk with arms? I’m betting—”
His voice was cut off suddenly by the high-pitched buzz of the Stryker saw. Dr. Rashid plunged the spinning blade of the saw into the demon’s naked scalp, using both of his hands to push it forward.
The demon screamed.
Blood hit Rashid’s face, but he didn’t even try to shield his eyes. He just kept cutting. The blade whined and groaned as it cut deeper, through flesh and muscle and into bone. It was designed to remove the calvarium of the skull to expose the brain, and it worked on demons as well as humans.
I didn’t have much time. Keeping a firm grip on my athame, I ran toward the demon, channeling my last reserve of power as I did so. I felt the pins and needles rushing up my arm. This was an old trick that my teacher, Meredith Silver, had taught me long ago. She called it “the Houdini.”
I let the power flow along the hilt of the athame, skimming along the surface of the earth node to boost my own reserves. The blade grew hot. I concentrated, and the double-edged knife began to tremble. Then it grew, elongating into a saber that gleamed as I raised it above my head.
The demon managed to turn around, and Rashid’s electric saw cut a deep gouge across its face. It opened its mouth to scream something at me, but I kept moving. I used all of my momentum to drive the blade straight down, through its chest.
It choked, lunging for me. But Rashid kept the Stryker saw on its face, and the blade whined as it continued to shear through the muscle tissue. I pushed downward with all of my strength. I heard a sucking noise, and then a crunch, as the blade passed through the demon’s rib cage.
Demonic anatomy could be idiosyncratic, so I was relieved that I’d chosen the right angle. Blood welled up within the wound, running down the surface of the blade. I wrapped both of my hands around the hilt for leverage. The demon howled something at me, possibly in its native language.
“Sorry,” I grunted. “I don’t speak asshole.”
Then I pushed down on the hilt with all of my might, using it as a fulcrum, which drove the blade upward in an arc. I felt it meet resistance as it passed through clusters of organs, some of which probably had no human equivalents. I gave the hilt one last push for good measure.
I was smart enough to shield my face, but hot blood still spattered my arms and chest, making my skin crawl. I was going to have to take six showers to get rid of the demonic funk. Maybe I’d bathe in tomato juice as well, just to be sure.
The demon kept screaming something, but its throat was ruined, so it all came out as a bubbling hiss. Blood seeped from its open mouth.
Miles had regained his footing now. He was rubbing his throat, but seemed fine. I grabbed his arm.
“Get the time bomb from Derrick’s pocket. Now.”
He nodded, then ran over to where Derrick was lying. I was impressed by his level of professional detachment. He didn’t even look twice at the body of his lover, unconscious on the floor. He rifled through his pockets, found the globe, and returned to my side.
“Now what?”
Still gripping the athame with both hands, I gave it a sharp tug. The blade slid out of the demon’s body. More blood came with it. I knew I should have worn a slicker.
I took the time bomb from him.
“Run. Grab Derrick and drag him out of the blast radius.”
I kept a feverish grip on the globe as I turned and ran. I didn’t allow myself to look back. I prayed that it would take the demon a few more seconds to regenerate, especially with the considerable damage that I’d done to its body.
My legs were shaking as I reached Lucian’s side. He reached out to steady me. I must have had a truly insane look on my face, because he grabbed me lightly by the shoulders, looking into my eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Just be ready to run,” I told him. I looked up. The demon had taken a step forward, but it was still bleeding heavily. The front of its chest was slowly coming back together, the tendrils of flesh reknitting themselves with astonishing speed.
Dr. Rashid was kneeling beside Derrick’s body, checking his vitals. The three of them had moved to a safe distance.
I looked at the time bomb one last time. It really did look just like a snow globe. But I trusted Linus.
I hurled it at the ground in front of the demon.
The glass shattered. White light enveloped the demon’s form, and I felt a tremor pass through the air. Everything seemed to go a shade darker. The demon’s writhing movements slowed, then ceased altogether.
It was frozen.
I stared at the cone of white light that was bathing the demon. Drops of blood hovered motionless within it, frozen in perfect meniscus. The demon’s mouth remained open. Its eyes blazed.
Something exploded behind me.
I turned and saw the remnants of the door to the autopsy suite, now scattered in charred bits across the ground. Selena emerged through the ruined doorway, accompanied by two OSI agents dressed in protective gear.
“You’re late,” I told her. “You missed everything.”
My bravado was already crumbling, though. I couldn’t take my eyes off Derrick’s still form. Selena saw the direction of my gaze.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get him patched up.”
“What about the pureblood?”
“We have the technology to contain him. We’ll be able to question him later, under controlled conditions.”
The two agents had already surrounded the frozen demon and were weaving a complex field of infrared light with their athames.
I walked shakily over to Miles and Dr. Rashid. The coroner saw the expression on my face and cleared his throat.
“Your friend has a broken arm. Possibly a few broken ribs, and a concussion. But he’s stable. I believe he’ll recover completely.”
“I thought you normally dealt with dead bodies, not live ones.”
“I’ve dealt with a lot of things in my career.” He blinked. “This is new, though. In fact, I’m not exactly sure what—” He blinked. “I mean, I don’t know—What am I supposed to think about—”
He gestured wordlessly to the four-legged demon, still locked in midscream.
Suddenly, a small gray form appeared at his side. The demon-boy looked up at him. Rashid looked down at the boy. He had an expression of almost childlike wonder on his face.
“What exactly are you?” he asked softly.
The boy smiled. Then he reached up on tiptoes, as if to whisper something in the doctor’s ear. Rashid leaned down, and the boy placed a hand on his cheek.
“Good night,” he said simply.
Rashid stared at him, confused for a moment.
Then he dropped to the floor, unconscious.
The boy turned to me. “He won’t remember any of this. I’ve damaged the specific neuronal clusters associated with this incident. He should wake up with a headache, but that’s all.”
“Nice trick,” I said. “Want to come with us now?”
I held out my hand.
The boy looked solemnly at me for a moment. His eyes were the color of two peacock green marbles that I used to have as a child.
Then he took my hand. His skin was cool to the touch. His horns were gone, and he resembled a blond boy once again, face streaked with dirt, naked, shivering, and hopelessly small.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said.
I led him over to Selena. “Don’t worry. That’s kind of our specialty.”
4
“Have you ever tried hot chocolate?”
The boy gave Selena a skeptical look as she held out the foam cup. He shook his head slowly.
“Try it. Our machine makes it pretty good. It’s not fancy, but it’ll warm you up.”
“I’m ectothermic. I can regulate my own body temperature.”
“Try it anyway.”
He took the cup. “It smells strange.”
“You’ll like it. Trust me.”
He took a sip of the hot liquid. He swallowed, then licked his lips. “You’re right. I do like it.” He drained the cup. “Do you have any more?”
“Sure. Follow me.”
Selena led him to the coffee machine. He stared at it in fascination.
“It makes hot beverages,” she said.
“How does it work?”
“See the buttons with the numbers? Press
B
and then four.”
He did so. His eyes widened as the machine began to hiss and burble. Another foam cup dropped into the slot at the bottom, and he actually stepped back in surprise. “Where did it come from?”
“There’s a stack of them inside the machine.”
“Oh,” he murmured.
The machine gave a final loud bubbling noise, and then a stream of hot chocolate poured into the cup. The boy’s eyes never left it. When it was done, he just stood there, uncertain what to do next.