Derek said, “Twenty-eight seconds until they’re in place.”
A window shattered. A rock bounced across the lobby, sparkling glass shards catching the pink glow from outside. “As soon as the protestors are down, have the men draw back. That black thing is a demon.”
“What thing?”
“He cannot see it, me sha.” I rotated my upper body at the familiar French tones. “He is fully human,” Leo said. Outside, the demon cast no shadow. He wasn’t fully here. Yet.
The master of the southeastern vamps, and arguably one of the most powerful vamps in the U.S., shrugged negligently. He was wearing a tuxedo with a black silk shirt, white cummerbund, and bowtie. He looked beautiful. And deadly. His black eyes sparkled as if he knew what I had thought, and he reached out to smooth my hair back from my face, along my shoulder and spine, in a sleek caress. Beside him stood Grégoire, a slight figure in midnight blue tux with a blue silk shirt the color of his eyes. The vamps looked gorgeous together.
I put my weapon on safety, holstered it, and pulled them back from the door. “Go back to your rooms.” They looked at each other, turned to the windows, and smiled, fangs clicking down. It wasn’t charming. More like two feral creatures staring at prey. I got a bad feeling.
“It has been many years since we have been to battle,” Grégoire said. “Our servants are restrained.”
I scanned behind me. Ignored the rock that exploded into the room only feet away. Bruiser and the twins were sitting on the couches in front of the fireplace. Staring at nothing. I raced over and saw my weapons on the floor at the twins’ feet. Wrassler was asleep on the rug. “Let them go,” I snarled, weaponing up, strapping on blades, checking the M4. “I need them.” The shotgun was loaded for vamp with silver fléchette rounds. I was hoping silver worked on demons, and I was the only one with silver. Leo’s decision. A dumb one. I could lay blame later, if I lived. I took Leo’s arm. “Please. Let the servants go.”
“No. The little witch is ours,” Grégoire said. He vamped out fully, his pupils growing wide as quarters in blood red sclera. “You have done well, bringing her to me.”
He had ordered me to bring him Evangelina so he could kill her. Crap.
“And we must liberate Shaddock.” Leo freed his arm from my fingers with a small shake that jarred my bones, peering out the window into the growing dark and increasing reddish glare of Evangelina’s magics. Lincoln’s head was still silhouetted in the pink energies. “Shaddock’s master, Dufresnee, is sworn to me, and I to him. I have drunk from him. Shaddock is mine.”
“Shaddock is a barbarian, but he is our barbarian,” Grégoire agreed, sounding eager.
“Shall we?” Leo asked him.
Grégoire drew a sword from a sheath I hadn’t noted, hanging at his side. “Forgive me if I precede you, my master.” With a firm pop of air, like a drumhead hit hard, he disappeared.
“He is always first on a battlefield,” Leo said, aggrieved. He vamped out faster than I could process the change and disappeared with a puff of air that moved my hair with its passage. Both men reappeared outside. It looked magical, but the movement of air and falling glass indicated that they had gone out through the broken windows. They faced off against Evangelina.
I swore succinctly and gathered myself to follow. Derek caught my arm. “You’re not wearing a vest, Legs,” he said.
“They don’t have guns,” I replied. “Time?”
“They’re in place. On my order, I’ve instructed the men to target the humans and the witch on first volley. Where is this demon?”
“Your two o’clock. About ten feet off the ground. I have silver ammo,” I said. “It might work on the demon.”
His eyes promised me retribution for not telling him about the silver. “Go,” he said.
Time had done that slow-down thing, where every sight is sharpened, each sound is clear, crisp, and slow. Outside I heard the sound of firing, a boom-boom-boom of overlapping shotgun fire. Humans fell fast, downed by fat, non-lethal, antiriot beanbags fired at point blank range by figures dressed in night-combat black. Then they were shot by tranquilizer darts, to keep them down. But nothing hit Evangelina. She stood tall in the red car, behind a red ward, a hedge of thorns so strong, the concrete blackened and cracked where it intersected the ground outside of the tires. The ward sizzled a smutty black, like charcoal and flames, her arms out to her sides as she gathered power. Her scarlet hair flew to the sides, a wind buffeting her slender form, molding to her body.
Blue strobes lit the scene as cops pulled up. They’d be in the way, but there was no help for that. Beside me, Derek counted off the time for the shooters to get back to safety. “Three-one-hundred, two-one-hundred, one-one-hundred. Go!”
I dove into the fray, the M4 in one hand, stabilized against my side, and the semiautomatic in the other. The smell of human blood, witch, and vamp blood hit me. Demon burned my nostrils, acrid as smoke. I had weapons, but I needed more. “Hayyel!” I shouted as I ran, hoping my angel was still hanging around, keeping an eye on the blood-diamond.
Derek followed me, firing rubber bullets up, not hurting the demon, but drawing his attention. Allowing me to get in under the winged evil. Time slowed further, a thick construct that parted around me, allowing me to move faster than any human.
“Hayyel,” I breathed, stepping beneath the Raven Mocker, his wings wide above me. His beak open. Screaming. The tail that constrained him was attached to his leg like a shackle, dropping to the earth, snaking across the hotel’s drive along a trail of blood thrown by the protestors. Evangelina’s blood. Shaddock’s blood. Drained into bowls and splashed by humans. Humans who were now inactive. No longer throwing blood. The tail thinned. I had a feeling that if the Raven Mocker got loose, it would be bad. Really bad. “Hayyel. Please come get the Kalona Ayeliski, the Raven Mocker.” The demon screamed and beat his wings, looming above me. “I give him to you on a platter of silver fléchettes.”
Darkness and emptiness drenched me, swarmed over me, filled me with a pressure that stole my breath. It felt like being smothered in my sleep, drowning in the knowledge of failure, utter and complete. Like dying in the darkness, drenched in the blood of my brothers and sisters and children. The Cherokee on the Trail of Tears had been lied to, cheated, defeated, beaten, and banished, for the greed of the white man. They had walked the long trail, dying in despair by the hundreds, their lives cut short feeding this demon.
Wings flapped down. I saw them drop, shutting, closing on me. I tried to fire my weapons. Tried to duck. But my fingers wouldn’t squeeze the triggers. I couldn’t even fall. Hayyel didn’t come. The wings swept in, enveloping me.
It was like being struck by lightning. Stealing my sight, my hearing, my energy. I fell then, a dizzying descent. I heard the sound of weapons hitting the ground, tinks of sound, almost lost in the emptiness of the void. I landed hard on one knee—the pain the only thing that proved I was still on Earth and not in the emptiness of a demon’s hell.
Then, even the wrenching of the fall was gone. I was deep in the absence of . . . everything. All sensation vanished. All hope fled. I would have sobbed had I been able to draw a breath.
Beast? Help!
But Beast was gone. It felt as if part of me had died in Evangelina’s basement, just as The People had died on the Trail of Tears. Their memories and despair swamped me. Lying in the frozen mud, sick, as white soldiers walked past me. Pain in waves, overwhelming. Dying. I was dying. And maybe it was best. Maybe I should give up the fight. The pain. Maybe the time of The People was past.
Far, far away, I heard a sound. Slow, slow, slow—thump . . . thump. Again nothingness, an ageless passage of time in the darkness, the aloneness, of the demon’s world. Until . . . The abyss was punctured by a sound, resonant, resounding. Thump . . . thump.
A heartbeat. My heart, slowing.
There was no up or down. No me or it. But if I still possessed a body, I would have weapons. And there would be a blade, heavily silvered, in a sheath. Near my right hand. Near . . . here. I had trained to reach and draw and cut outward and upward all in one sliding motion, a parry built into the draw. Fast. Trained so hard and thoroughly that I never had to think about drawing the weapon.
I reached up, my mind pushing through the motions, the expectation of action. And though I felt nothing, I slid into the memory of fight, my mind moving even if my hand didn’t believe it, my fractured faith taking over where reality had failed. I drew, cut outward, upward, and finished with a thrust, whispering in my mind, Hayyel. The Raven Mocker is yours. Send him back where he belongs.
Light blasted against me. Light and air and warmth. A flare of moonlight. A vision of angel wings and demon claws. A concussion of sound buffeted me, the roar of every battle that had ever been. It rolled me across the concrete, banging elbows, knees, jaw, and cheek. The M4 was beneath my hand. I caught it up. Continued the roll. Saw the demon above me, feathered and blacker than the sky above it. No time to finesse a shot. No collateral damage, the soft thought warned. I braced the weapon on the concrete, away from the blinding light. Fired carefully into the dark. Boom. Boom. Boom. I rolled again. Braced. Fired. Boom. Boom. Boom. I was on my feet, pulling blades and stabbing into the demon-dark. The light was blinding against the shadow.
I jumped back. Saw the demon constrict. Tighten where I had stabbed. The light arrowed in after the silver of my shots. The darkness drew in and down, into a large black bird, four feet tall, wings flailing, fighting for freedom, bleeding black blood, even as it was pulled into the blood splattered on the drive. Over him, a massive golden eagle flapped his wings, screaming a challenge, throwing off light and lightning. The blood on the concrete rippled and bubbled, a clotting, drying mass, like a trap. A tar pit for evil.
The demon was caught. Sucked down, into the blood. Gone in an instant. Just gone. So was the golden eagle. My angel? Hayyel? I blinked away the image of heaven and hell in battle.
