Reaper: The Demontouched Saga (Book 3) (2 page)

When I get close I see the car is a mid-nineties Toyota Celica. Looking inside the window I can see that it’s a manual transmission.

Thank god.

I don’t want to have to teach another person how to drive a stick.

I open the unlocked door and sit down in the driver’s seat. I pull out my knife and put it up to the ignition. I’ve never been good at this.

I’m about to push the blade in when I notice a key poking out of the ashtray. I open it the rest of the way to pull it out.

Definitely a Toyota key. It takes me a few moments, but I get the car started and drive back to the girls.

Sara helps me lift the man up and we put him in the passenger seat. When he reclines his seat back Sara does a double take.

“We can’t all fit in here.” I look over at the woman. “Take the car and get out of here.”

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“We’ll get the next one.”

She thanks me before getting into the car, driving away when I nod. I hate giving up the car like that. The odds of finding another one with the key in it is as close to zero as they come.

“So, what now?” Sara says.

“Same plan,” I say. “We just hope that the kid was the only one guarding this street.”

“Keep hoping,” I hear someone say from behind me.

- 2 -

Is it too much to ask for things to be easy for once?

I turn around to see two guys, both wearing fancy looking suits. You can always tell the guys who work for someone big. They are typically the ones that walk around flaunting it.

This also tells me that the local street gangs aren’t responsible for the bombings, not that they have ever been capable of a coordinated attack like this.

“Drop the knife and your guns,” the bald one says, cracking his knuckles. “Now.”

“Doesn’t seem like a fair fight.” I say. “There’s only two of you.”

Pimp Hat on the right laughs. “Not every day you meet a cocky priest.”

“Cocky. Confident. Potato. Po-tah-toe.”

“You got one more chance. Drop them now, or die.”

“B.” I push the knife towards Baldie, putting a little extra into it. I want to knock him on his ass.

His lips just curl when he catches the knife before it hits home. “That’s a neat little trick.” His hand jerks slightly when I try to push it again. “We might need to take that from you.”

Pimp Hat starts to walk towards us. Sara aims her gun and pulls the trigger, hitting him square in the chest. He staggers a step, but it doesn’t stop him.

She lets out a scream and starts to pull the trigger quickly. It is hard to tell if any hit home because he doesn’t stop.

Pimp Hat reaches out and picks me up by my collar. “Still feeling cocky?”

“Always.” I kick him as hard as I can between the legs. Demon or not, it should drop him.

I can only imagine the look on my face when it doesn’t. From the grin on his face, I can tell it was a good one.

“Let him go!” Sara hits him in the arm with the butt of the gun. Receiving a backhand for her trouble, the force of the blow knocking her to the ground.

“You’re gonna regret that, fucker.”

“I doubt it.” He throws me into the side of the bus.

Stars enter my vision the second I hit the ground. I can feel Eunie starting to go ape-shit inside of me. I rub my eyes trying to keep it together for a minute longer. “Sara,” I say before I feel Pimps Hat’s big hands around my throat.

“What do we have here?” he pulls the amulet off of my neck and shoves it in my face. “Where did you get this?”

“You can find the most amazing things in a strip club,” I say.

He rewards me with a slap to the mouth. It doesn’t take long for me to taste the blood coming from my split lip. I hate the taste of blood. Especially my own.

Baldie walks from behind Pimp Hat and holds the knife to my arm. “I think you need to learn a little respect.”

“Won’t stick. They tried.”

He shoves the blade of the knife into my arm. My lip quivers slightly as I hold back a scream. The pain in my arm feels like someone threw a shot of salty tequila into the wound. I always wondered what the demons felt when I stabbed them with my knife. I just hoped that I could get one of them to tell me before I killed him.

“You are lucky we need you alive,” Pimp Hat says.

“He’d be lucky if we killed him.” Baldie twists the knife slightly. I respond with a blood curdling scream. “This way he gets to feel pain before we take him.”

Reaching deep inside, I put everything into pulling the amulet out of Pimp Hat’s hand with my power. This isn’t going to end well unless I can use all of Eunie’s shit.

Magneto just isn’t cutting it here.

It takes me a few moments, but I manage to pull the amulet back to my hand. Before I can do anything with it, though, Baldie knocks it free. I hear it rattle as it hits the pavement. I need to shift to bring it back, but something tells me that I missed my shot.

“You have some balls, priestie. I’ll give you that,” Pimp Hat says.

“Unlike you.” One of these days I may learn to watch my mouth. Today is not going to be that day. If I’m gonna die, it’s going to be on my terms.

It takes everything I have to not scream when Baldie pulls the knife from my arm. I feel the warmth of the blood as it flows down to my fingertips. I have to take a few breaths to keep from blowing chunks all over the duo.

I have never been good with blood loss. My wife used to make fun of me because I would nearly pass out every time I had blood drawn. Right now I feel about a hundred times worse than that. The only semi-positive news is that Eunie has clearly backed off.

Pimp Hat puts me down and faces me away from him. “Start walking.”

“I’ll get the bitch.”

These two ass clowns have just hit my limit. You can mess with me a hundred different ways and I’ll gladly take it. I may kick your ass for it, but I’ll take it. Messing with my woman is clearly crossing the line.

I try to pull off a roundhouse kick on Pimp Hat right behind me and miss him by a proverbial mile. I’m no Chuck Norris, but I should have at least hit him. I don’t even get a chance to make up for my shitty effort before I take a fist to the chest.

With the pain in my arm, and now my gut, it takes me a few to get to my knees. When I do I only get rewarded with a cracked rib or three thanks to Baldie’s boot. Not that I want to admit it, but this fight just crossed the impossibility barrier. The only thing I can do from here is give Sara a chance to run.

From my vantage point on the ground, it looks like Baldie doesn’t have a firm grip on my knife. It’s a shame he doesn’t have it closer to a vital organ since I need a killing blow to take him down. I’m not so sure that a simple knife wound will do a lot of good at this point.

So I try the only other move I have. I reach forward, managing to pull the knife from his hand. The moment I feel it in my fingertips, I lunge at Pimp Hat with everything I have left. That isn’t a lot. The strike would have been dead on if his ribs weren’t in the way. As it is, he is on the ground feeling the same intense pain that I felt earlier.

“How’s that feel?” I spit on the asshole before he can answer. Before I can make a move on Baldie he has me in a rather unpleasant full nelson which knocks my knife to the ground. I flail my arms in an attempt to get free, but he doesn’t budge. So I try the only other counter that I know.

I jump up in the air, curling into a ball when my legs get near my head. Then I shift my weight forward and to my right, hoping to toss him over my shoulders.

The end result isn’t even close to what I expected. He manages to shift his weight to counter my move. Instead of him being on the ground, he has me in a stronger hold. As an added bonus he is holding my head down to my chest.

“Go to sleep, priestie. It will be much easier that way,” Baldie says.

I have a minute or two left, if I’m lucky, before I pass out from air loss. Less if I keep struggling. I close my eyes and give in, hoping that he feels my lack of motion and drops his guard. It probably won’t work, but it’s all I have left.

“Get away from me!” Sara screams.

I open my eyes, trying to get a view of what is going on, but it’s hard to see anything when you head is being held down to towards the ground.

“Don’t make us hurt you like your little boyfriend here.” Pimp Hat says.

“Put me down!” she yells.

My stomach drops. I don’t care that they have me. Shit, I’m surprised I lasted this long to be honest. Sara, though, doesn’t deserve this. It’s like the motel all over again. The only solace I have this time is knowing I’ll be unconscious before too long.

It’s not helping me any now.

I notice the ground starting to glow a shade of reddish-orange. It is coming from somewhere ahead of me, judging from the dancing shadows below.

Pimp Hat lets out a blood curdling scream as the glow brightens. Within moments the only way I can tell it’s still night out is the shadows still lingering in my peripheral vision.

“What the hell did you do, bitch?” Baldie drops me and I hear him jogging in Sara’s direction.

I look up and see her backing up in an attempt to get some distance from him. I focus on the knife and send it into his back, making sure to put a little something extra into it when it got close. He drops on his face, dead before he even gets close.

Sara runs to me at full speed. “Are you O.K.?”

“I’ll survive. How about you?”

“We have to get you to a hospital.” She puts her hand on my wound.

“Rip it off,” I say holding my arm out.

She tears off my remaining sleeve and wraps it tightly around the wound. I then remove a button from my shirt and slip my hand in like a sling.

“I need to get to Uriel first.”

“What is so important that you need to see her before getting your arm looked at?”

“I need to know how you used the amulet.”

- 3 -

“Tell me, again, what did you do to activate the amulet?” Uriel asks her for the third time. She is just wanting to be thorough, but I can see the weight of the questions wearing on Sara.

“I told you. I don’t know. When he tried to grab me I just closed my eyes and held my hands out.”

“And then he just started burning?”

“I was just trying to keep him away.” She wipes the tears from her eyes. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“You did good, child.” She looks over the amulet again. “What I don’t get is why she could use it at all?”

“Maybe part of Israfil managed to get imprinted into the amulet?” It was the only theory I had. The only information we had on the amulet was that it could imprison a demon and linking it to the wearer. I assumed that the demon could vacate after the person died. Apparently I’m wrong.

“You may be right. We need to study this before you try to use it on Einuir. The last thing we want is to have you dealing with two demons fighting for your soul.”

“No doubt. One is bad enough.”

“As for Sara, I want to keep you away from it. We don’t know what it might do to you if you keep it around.”

I fully agree with her there. It is scary enough knowing she was able to do something with it in the first place. I remember how much I changed after I made my pact. I don’t want her to go through that if I can avoid it.

“What do you think about the attacks?”

“I believe that your friend from the strip club was involved. They may have had the other blasts set up ahead of time, in case there were others outside of the building.”

It was supposed to be a big event. It wouldn’t have been hard to imagine close to a hundred thousand people showing up for it. Shit, it would be hard to imagine that many people wouldn’t show up for a chance to get things back the way they were. Running water and electricity are two luxuries that most people would kill to have back.

“Something still doesn’t fit. The only documents on that file we found were linked directly to the bombs in the convention center. If the two were linked, then why didn’t we find more?”

“Israfil was a brilliant strategist. He loved to leave clues scattered around to throw us off of his trail. We would set up ambushes and attacks based on that information just to find ourselves on the receiving end.”

“So you are telling me he knew we would learn about the bombs ahead of time? And then he knew we would have a celebration afterwards? Some of those bombs went off blocks away from the center.”

“Sounds like something he would do.”

She may know Israfil well, but I don’t think it’s possible he knew about everything. If the bombs went off closer to the center, then I agree her theory makes sense.

My thoughts immediately wander to Nal. He was the only one I know that knew about the bombs inside the center and the victory celebration after I took down Israfil. When you add in the two demons that nearly took me out that were planning on taking me somewhere. I don’t normally believe the words that come out of a demon’s mouth, but right now the evidence is firmly in Duncan’s court. It’s a damn shame I had to kill him. It would be nice to ask him a few questions right about now.

I pull out my phone and walk towards the door. There is an easy way to settle this.

“Where are you going, Mitch?” Uriel says with a look of concern in her eyes.

“I need to make a call.”

“You’re grasping at straws. He isn’t what you think he is.”

“Just because you gave him some toys to give me, doesn’t mean you know him any better. The man is in it for himself. He has been that way as long as I’ve known him, probably longer.” I walk through the door and turn around. “I’ll give him a chance to tell me his side of the story. He deserves that, at least.”

I walk over to the wall surrounding her compound before turning around. I’m amazed when I see that she didn’t follow me out or send someone out to talk.

I dial Nal’s number and wait. The phone rings about six times before going to voice mail. Knowing he might be in a meeting, I dial one more time. He knows to answer when I call twice in a row. When he doesn’t answer the second call I know something is up.