“Bugger off, vampire,” he said, sneering. “Or I’ll haul out a toothpick and dust the floor with you.”
I leapt forward and backhanded him away from the altar and away from the elf. He went flying back to land on one of the circular tiers of the amphitheater. “Cocksucker! You’ve murdered so many women only the gods know the number, and yet you stand here, telling us to butt out?”
As I stomped toward him, he leapt up and quickly back-flipped away from me, landing on his feet, his hands out as he Bruce Lee’d me with his index finger.
“Bring it on, Daisy. We might look like a bunch of geeks, but we took a clue from the Evil Overlord List. We can fight. So either back off or prove what you think you’ve got going for you.”
The sneer in his tone grated on me, almost more than the cocky look in his eyes. This boy was bucking for an etiquette lesson, and I was the woman to teach it to him. I sped up and was nose to nose with him before he realized I’d even moved. Obviously, Geek Boy wasn’t used to dealing with vampires. Before he could say a word, I grabbed his head and yanked it to one side, stopping just short of breaking his neck.
“You feel that, babe? You feel how strong I am? You have any idea of how little it would take for me to snap your scrawny neck and send you into oblivion?”
I leaned over him and let my fangs extend, letting all my anger for Sabele and Claudette and the other women spill to the surface. “You’re the kind of whack-job pervert that I eat for dinner. You got it? I suck your kind dry and leave the hollow husks for the rats to find. Any reason I shouldn’t do this to you? Any goddamn motherfucking good reason?”
He struggled, but one move of my index finger to his neck, and he stopped. The pressure must be incredibly painful, I thought. Maybe I should make it just a little worse. I pressed harder—just a fraction, but enough to make him groan. He’d pass out if I exerted any more force.
I glanced at the other members of the group. There were thirteen of the original pack left here, and they were waiting for a sign from Harold as to what to do. Duane was there, nursing what looked like a broken nose. Damn! And I thought I’d broken his jaw.
Duane took a step toward me, and I shook my head. “One more step, and your lame Pooh-Bah gets it. Seriously. Back off, or the minute he’s dead, you’re next on my list.”
Smoky, Morio, Vanzir, and Delilah moved to fence in the remaining men. Camille managed to free the elf again with the help of Rozurial, who handled the iron cuffs for her. Camille gathered the girl up—she was a wispy thing—and carried her to the side, laying her down on the floor. She glared at Smoky until he crossed to her side and offered his trench to cover the unconscious girl, then returned to cage in the idiots we’d managed to corral.
I eased up on Harold’s neck as his pulse began to fade. “Now, you’re going to tell us everything: how many women you’ve killed, you’re going to give us a list of your membership, just all sorts of good things. Or we’ll kill you. All of you. One by one, in the most painful manner we can think of.”
“You . . . you wouldn’t . . .” he started to say, but I yanked my shirt up, forcing him to look at the scars lacing my body.
“Ding! Sorry, wrong answer. Look at me. I was put through torture you can’t even imagine before I was killed and turned into a vampire. I’m not squeamish. I know how to give as good as I got. You understand me?”
With a slight hiss, I leaned into his face and unmasked my full glamour, both vampire and Fae. Harold went limp in my hands, a puddle of cooperation. I reluctantly let go of him—I really wanted to mess him up—and he scrambled back.
“On your knees,” I said, deciding that if I couldn’t play executioner—at least not yet—I would make him grovel.
He fell to his knees, whimpering. The other men stared at him, then at me, and their eyes went wide. They began to back up, but the boys and Delilah herded them back into place.
“You killed Sabele, didn’t you? You stalked her, kidnapped her, and sacrificed her to the demons?” I wanted to hear him say it aloud. “And Claudette, the vampire?”
He sucked in a deep breath, but when I shook him, he answered. “Yes! I did it. Sabele wouldn’t give me the time of day. She wouldn’t look at me. So I decided she’d become a sacrifice. She was out for a walk, and I grabbed her. She begged us for her life,” he said, his face twisting with a manic smirk. “She begged us, on her knees, naked.”
“What about Claudette—the vampire?”
“We thought she was Fae at first. We invited her over and found out she planned to make a meal of us. So we managed to trap her in a ring of garlic and silver. We had no choice—we had to stake her.”
I closed my eyes. So Harold had been interested in Sabele. Even if she’d returned his attention, he’d probably have ended up killing her. And Claudette had been hunting them, yet she became the hunted. Too bad she hadn’t succeeded.
“How long have you been summoning actual demons?”
Harold blinked, and the smirk slid off his face. “We never managed to attract their attention until my uncle started studying necromancy with the sorcerer last year. This is the first time the Demon Gate really worked for us. Before, we just burnt the hearts of our sacrifices and offered them up to the demons.”
“Who started the order?” I asked, even though I already knew.
Harold whimpered again but said, “My great-grandfather. He belonged to another tradition before he left England. He updated it and decided to take the group in a different direction. A more forceful one, he said. He found the soul stone, and people began following him. He passed it down to my grandfather, who passed it down to my uncle. But the lodge was still a pale shadow compared to the level to which I’ve taken it.”
“Why did he pass over your father?” I tipped his head up, gazing at the pulse beating under his neck. I was thirsty, terribly thirsty.
Harold swallowed. “My grandfather said my father was weak. He said I was strong enough to handle it, though.”
“Where did your great-grandfather get the spirit—the soul stone?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But my uncle realized that it was more powerful than anybody thought. I don’t know how he knew. And then a year or so ago, we found out about Shadow Wing—”
I stiffened. We’d heard them invoke him. Here was our chance to find out what was going on. I poured on the glamour. “Who told you about Shadow Wing? Tell me everything.”
Harold choked on a sob then said, “We met a couple of drunken demons in a club downtown. They told us about the coming invasion. My grandfather sacrificed young women to the devil, but we decided that it might be better to offer them up to Shadow Wing in exchange for our lives when he broke through and took over. We figured we could live under his rule and maybe be part of his court. And it just seemed logical to offer Fae and elf women instead of humans. So my uncle learned to create a Demon Gate, and we used the soul stone to invoke Shadow Wing . . .”
“Yes, your uncle,” I said, frowning. “Your uncle was an idiot. You didn’t invoke Shadow Wing, you moron, you called in an astral demon who had no connection to the demon lord, and that is the only reason you’re still alive. Shadow Wing would have crunched your bones for lunch. Your uncle was a sloppy necromancer. Just who taught him his magic?”
With a faint lick of his lips, Harold said, “Rialto, a sorcerer originally from Italy. In exchange for my uncle’s daughter.”
I closed my eyes, trying to force back the bloodlust from overwhelming me. “He paid the man with his daughter?”
Harold nodded. “She’s twelve. Old enough.”
Old enough? I forced myself to take a long, deep breath and counted to twenty before I asked, “One last question. Does Rialto live in town?”
He gasped out a breathless “Yes” and gave me the address. And then I couldn’t take it anymore. I fell on him, savaging his throat with my fangs. There were no words that could stop me. Camille and Delilah knew it, and so did our friends. They didn’t even try.
I ripped at his flesh, making it hurt, making it as painful as I could, then lapped the blood quickly, forcefully, without offering him the sweet bliss of communion. He screamed, dying beneath my fangs. As I leaned back and squatted on my haunches, eyeing the other men with a perverse sense of pleasure, they took a collective step back.
Delilah started to say something, but Roz touched her arm and shook his head. She let out a long sigh and nodded.
I stood up after a moment, leaving the blood to stain my chin and the front of my shirt. I wanted them to fear me. I wanted them to piss their pants thinking I was coming for them next. One did—Duane. The stench of urine rose to attract my attention.
I walked up to him and smacked him full in the face, finishing the broken nose I’d started earlier. He moaned and began to cry, but it wasn’t enough, so I kneed him. Hard. He went down shrieking. If I was correct in the amount of force I’d used, he’d never father children. He’d never be able to even attempt it.
With a faint smile at the rest of them, I turned to Camille. “If you don’t get Chase over here, I’ll finish the rest of them off. I’d dearly love to, but I suppose we should give him his due.”
Camille looked at the men and shook her head. “They know too much. They know about Shadow Wing. We can’t let them talk. I don’t know what to do with them, to be honest.”
“Do we play judge, jury, and executioner? They were all party to the murders here. We’ve got rapists and sadists here, too. You can bet they would have watched the elf girl die without lifting a hand. I don’t know what the answer is. You want them taken care of, I’ll do it,” I said. “I can take them out without remorse.”
Delilah interrupted us. “Hand them over to Tanaquar. They were trying to summon Shadow Wing, so they’re our enemies. We found the spirit seal in their possession. Prisoners of war, I say. Even if the demon lord didn’t know they existed, they were trying to enlist in his army.”
I flashed her a brilliant smile. “You are a brilliant and wonderful woman, Kitten. What do we do about the house?”
Vanzir spoke up. “As I said, leave it to me. Once you seal the Demon Gate, I have friends who can help. The house will burn to the ground in a fire so fierce it will destroy any evidence left behind. So hot that it easily could have incinerated anybody caught in the flames. No one will ever know these boys are still alive.”
Camille nodded. “Let’s do it. Smoky can take me back to the house. We’ll fetch Wilbur and bring him here, while you get these men ready for transfer through the portal. I’ll run up to the Whispering Mirror while I’m at home to let the OIA know to expect incoming prisoners.”
“Sounds good. Go for it,” I said, thinking that this was one operation I was glad to mop up and get over with. I’d rather fight a Karsetii any day than humans who had gone so wrong, so bad. Somehow, it was easier to face demons when they looked like monsters rather than the boys next door.
While Camille and Smoky were gone, I sent Roz and Delilah upstairs to bring down anybody who might be hiding, and to lock the front door. To forestall a mutiny by our prisoners, we drugged them all with sleeping pills we found in one of their bedrooms. I sincerely hoped it was the last sound sleep they’d ever get. Delilah looked a little queasy after ransacking their bedrooms. She dumped a large tin of Z-fen on the ground at my feet and a number of homemade videotapes.
“Chase is going to want to see these. He won’t ask too many questions after he sees what the guys were doing here.” Her voice was a whisper, and I glanced in her eyes. She was close to shifting, but I sensed Panther was hanging out in her aura rather than Tabby.
“The girls?” I asked softly.
She nodded. “Yeah. They filmed their rituals. Bad. It’s really bad. Vanzir is right; this place needs to be burnt to rubble and then burn the ashes. There are a lot of ghosts walking these halls, Menolly. A lot of pain attached to this place. All the spirits down there—the women. Can we set them free, or will they haunt this land forever?”
“I don’t know. How could something this evil go on in secret for so many years? I don’t get why none of them ever let anything slip.”
Delilah sighed. “Mutual protection. War stories. It’s easier to keep a secret if you share it with your buddies and make them part of it. Everybody had something to lose, and none of them wanted to end up in jail or on death row.”
She wiped her eyes. “I really think they believed Shadow Wing was going to protect them. People can rationalize anything if they want it bad enough. Sometimes I just want to turn into a cat and never come back. It would be so much easier . . .”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “Easier, yes, but we need you. And besides, we’d miss out on dissing Springer and his freaks. Come on, think of it this way: now these wing nuts won’t ever be able to kill anybody again. We couldn’t stop the murders they already committed, but we’ve stopped any more from happening. And the elf—we saved her life.”
Delilah glanced over at the girl, who by now had returned to consciousness. Morio was looking after her, and Roz had managed to find some sort of painkiller in those voluminous pockets of his. She would be okay, though she was severely injured. We’d take her back to Otherworld with us when we took the boys through to hand them over to the OIA.
“I guess you’re right. We can’t win every battle. And we found the fifth spirit seal.” She sighed and wandered over to join Morio.
